


The Distance In Between

by hyperlydian



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Adventure, M/M, Romance, fairy tale AU, peterpanyeol, self discovery!, so many fairy tales, thumbelina chen, tinker bell lu han, wendy kyungsoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-07 16:29:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11062803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperlydian/pseuds/hyperlydian
Summary: Two little people set off to save more than just one big, big world.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> First, a shout out to Lynn, for brainstorming this with me so long ago and to Manda, for the [drawing](http://ayohexo.tumblr.com/post/46570126908/tinkerbell-luhan-do-not-edit-or-repost%E2%80%9D) that inspired us. three cheers for my beta team, k, l, and j, for helping me take a hatchet to my sentences, a kiss for m for their plotting assistance, and a big group hug for teams altair and vega! I was impossible this last week, I know, but we did it!  
>   
> The title comes from the song “I’ll Try” from Peter Pan II (try the Jesse McCartney version, it’s gr9), but if you really want to get in the mood for this story, please listen to Debussy’s [Clair de Lune](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufNZNOHtQ3o%E2%80%9D).  
>   
> Originally written for [exorbitantly's](http://exorbitantly.dreamwidth.org/) spring 2014 run.  
>   
> *runs around sprinkling pixie dust on exorbitantly’s amazing mods to help them fly ^^*

Once upon a time, all the stories of all the magical kingdoms were collected and recorded in a book. The greatest of these kingdoms was ruled over by the Fairy King, whose magic was beautiful and used for good. Because of the powerful magic of the Fairy King, each story in the book came alive within its own pages. Heroes and villains and long lost princes, in their separate worlds as living beings.  
  
Then, one Midsummer Night’s Eve, the book was left out in the rain, each raindrop wetting the ink and bonding the pages. Such was the magic of Midsummer Night’s Eve, that as the ink smudged, the stories themselves blended together.  
  
As the book dried, the worlds of two tiny heroes were bound together by magic, and the paths of all the stories were changed forever…  
  
✴  
  
The smudge is still there when Lu Han flies outside that morning, a little gray and blue patch where a cloud and some sky have blurred together. In Never Land’s sky, clouds are always rounded, like thick clumps of dandelions floating in a blue sea. Lu Han hovers for a moment, squinting up at the smeared bit of sky.  
  
Below, he can hear Chanyeol and the Lost Boys yelling and catcalling to each other as they make their way into the forest, heading for Pirate’s Cove and looking for trouble. Lu Han refused to go with them. Or rather, he’d let out a huffy clamor of bells and a cloud of pixie dust before flying off alone, ignoring Chanyeol’s shouts of _“Tink! Tinker Bell, c’mon!”_ as Lu Han made his way above the treetops.  
  
Chanyeol’s smile had been particularly bright that morning, all fresh sunlight and boyish enthusiasm, and Lu Han needed to get away. Now, the fuzzy patch of sky is distracting him from dwelling on his problems.  
  
Lu Han flies a bit closer, wings fluttering at his back and his skin glowing extra bright in the morning sun. A ways off on the coast of the island, he can see one of the mermaids sunning herself on a rock, combing her crimson hair. Further out in the bay is Hook’s ship, flag fluttering in the soft breeze. The cloud seems too heavy to float up with the others, hanging low enough for Lu Han to reach it without any problem.  
  
He had discovered the smudge over a week ago, the morning after a torrential rainstorm. Normally, after it rains, the Never Land looks washed clean, pristine and new, but in one spot, it looked like the cloud and the sky had run together, white mixing with blue until it became grey and blurry, a leftover from the rainstorm. Perhaps it was because of all the time Lu Han has spent with Chanyeol, who was as reckless as they come but on that day he had decided to see what would happen if he flew into it.  
  
The slight breeze coming off the sea carries the sound of Chanyeol’s laughter above the trees and with it, a heaviness skins into Lu Han’s chest, making him desperate for an escape. Taking a deep breath, he flies up, a trail of sparks following behind, and into the smudge.  
  
It’s strange, this bit of sky, the way the light of the bright Never Land sun dims to gray, all the color gone, and it feels as if there’s something pressing on Lu Han, crushing him flat and then making him whole again, all at once. After almost too many missed breaths, air whooshes back into his lungs and Lu Han blinks quickly to wet his dry eyes.  
  
The wind is suddenly stronger, the air heavy with a new thickness. Lu Han’s cheeks are damp with mist that seems to come from nowhere, and when he’s able to open his eyes again to look down, Never Land is gone.  
  
The first time Lu Han flew through the smudge, he had almost fallen out of the sky when he’d seen Never Land’s forest suddenly replaced with the roof of a house, green leaves turned to deep brown shingles. Stranger still had been the way the rhythmic sound of the tide drowned out the sounds of a town.  
  
The house the smudge puts Lu Han above is near the edge of the town, the sea of buildings petering off as a dark wood grows up around the edges. The tops of the trees, spiky and not anything like the soft leaves that bud from the trees in Never Land, stretch up over the far hills in a dense forest. On the other edge of the town, Lu Han can smell rather than see the ocean, salt and the scent of fish carried on the strong wind coming in from the coast.  
  
The house is nice enough, flowers that Lu Han had never seen before spilling out of a window box, and cheerily painted shutters frame the windows, standing out against the plain brick. Sitting on the edge of the sill, legs dangling into the petals of the flowers below, is a boy about the same size as Lu Han, singing.  
  
All the other people of the town are big, like Chanyeol and the people from the Indian Village, large enough to hold Lu Han in their palm. This boy, Chen, is special, and that’s why Lu Han keeps finding himself back here.  
  
Or maybe it’s Chen’s singing. The mermaids in Never Land are beautiful singers, their songs enchanting enough to even ensnare Chanyeol, on occasion, but Lu Han has never heard anyone sing like Chen. His voice has a clarity to it that reminds Lu Han of when he’d looked down into one of the still pools on the island, filled with rainwater and totally clear, and he’d seen straight to the bottom, the floor of sand glittering up at him like the stars of the night sky.  
  
Lu Han has always wished for a voice, anything other than the jingles of sound he speaks with now, and this boy’s voice…  
  
Suddenly, the singing stops. “Oh, it’s you,” Chen says, craning his neck to look up at Lu Han as he hovers a few feet above the window. “I wondered if you’d come today.”  
  
The first time they’d met, Chen had been feeding a robin birdseed from his hand. Lu Han had let out a loud jingle in surprise, wings stuttering to catch himself as he tried to remember how to fly, and scared the bird away.  
  
Chen had looked up at Lu Han, frowning as the robin fluttered off into the nearest tree. As soon as Lu Han had been able to catch his breath, he’d turned around and flown back into the smudge, and ended up in Never Land again.  
  
Since then, Lu Han’s come back enough times that Chen isn’t surprised to see him anymore, staying put on the sill as Lu Han flies down to land. He’s wiggling his toes against the richly colored petals of a violet, staring out into the grassy area behind the house. A small stream that winds its way around the edge of town and into the ocean separates the rood from the house, and the morning sunlight glints off the water brightly enough to be seen from the window.  
  
Lu Han takes a seat next to Chen, letting his feet down into the flowers. The petals tickle his soles and he can feel pollen dusting his heels.  
  
“Mother’s out at the market again,” Chen says suddenly, with a voice that borders on sour. “I asked to go but she said I’m too small and it’s too dangerous.”  
  
Lu Han is never sure if Chen is talking to him or not. There’s something very lonely about the way he always seems to be chatting, and it’s even worse when Lu Han can’t answer.  
  
Chen glances over at him, eyes running along the transparent edge of Lu Han’s wings. He says jealously, “You’re small like me, but you have wings. You can go anywhere.”  
  
_What good is being able to go places if there’s no way to tell people about what you’ve seen?_ Lu Han wants to say. A jingle and an explosion of sparks burst from him instead.  
  
Chen wrinkles his nose, waving away the cloud with a hand. “You must be fun at parties with that trick.”  
  
Mouth tightening into a pout, Lu Han crosses his arms and angles himself so that Chen gets a view of his wings and back instead of his face.  
  
“Or not,” Chen snorts when Lu Han points his nose into the air. “The attitude would probably kill the party atmosphere.”  
  
Still laughing, Chen pushes himself to his feet, brushing the wrinkles from his pants.  
  
The clothes Chen wears make Lu Han feel very naked, the green cloth he keeps tied around his hips inadequate next to Chen’s tiny vests and trousers. Chanyeol’s outfit, with his bright green tights and belt, never has the same effect because, well, there’s just so much of Chanyeol that it only makes sense that he needs to be covered.  
  
On the other hand, Chanyeol has little green slippers that he wears on his feet, while Chen pads around barefoot, just like Lu Han.  
  
“My mother makes all my clothes,” Chen explained another day when Lu Han reached out to touch the frilled cuffs of his shirt, “but she couldn’t find a pair of shoes small enough.” He frowned down at the ruffled shirt. “They probably would have had girly buckles on them or something, though, so maybe that’s a good thing.”  
  
Chen’s clothes _are_ all kind of frilly, but Chen has a delicate sort of face, with clever-looking eyes and a curling mouth, that would suit almost anything.  
  
Today, he’s got on brown trousers and a vest that matches the color of the violets in the window box buttoned over his shirt. The hems of his pants are rolled up, probably so he could feel the flowers on his bare feet. Chen makes no move to straighten them out, walking instead to the inside edge of the windowsill. “Come on,” he says, grabbing ahold of the curtains that are hanging down beside the window. “I wanna show you something.”  
  
And with a jump, Chen disappears over the edge of the sill. Lu Han’s wings launch him upright. His offense at Chen’s joke is forgotten as sparks fly around him in alarm, but when he flies down off the sill, Chen is laughing up at him, safely on the floor.  
  
“Didn’t know you’d be so worried about me,” he says, eyes dancing. Turning, Chen motions for Lu Han to follow.  
  
Lu Han’s been inside the house once or twice before with Chen while his mother was out. It’s cozy, terracotta tiles warmed by the sun and off-white plaster walls. On one of the other windowsills, near a worn looking rocking chair, Lu Han can see what looks like Chen’s own makeshift bedroom. There’s a jewelry box doubling as a wardrobe and a large walnut shell for a bed.  
  
At the far end of the large room, there’s a glass-paned door. Chen marches up to it, digging his fingers into the gap between it and its casing. The door is much too big for Chen to open himself, the brass knob hanging high overhead, but before Lu Han can flutter up to try turning it himself, the door miraculously pops open.  
  
Chen grins at him. “Figured out last week the latch is loose.” He wriggles through the gap, and Lu Han follows curiously.  
  
Inside, the air is warm and humid, the smell of soil everywhere. Lu Han looks around in wonder. The room has walls made of glass, fogged up and littered with beads of moisture so that it’s difficult to see outside. From wall to wall, it’s filled with plants, foliage tumbling over the edge of boxes or from pots that hang from the ceiling.  
  
“It’s a greenhouse,” Chen says, flicking at a leaf near him and watching it spring back. “My mom likes gardening and it’s too cold here most of the year to manage it outside, so,” he makes a sweeping motion with his hand.  
  
Lu Han has seen lots of houses. He and Chanyeol have made excursions over the ocean into large cities and seen buildings of all shapes and sizes, but this greenhouse is something new. Lu Han is itching to fly around and explore —  
  
“Chen?” The sound of footsteps and a door closing filters into the glass room. Chen looks alarmed, shooing Lu Han back out the gap they’d come through.  
  
“You’d better go,” he hisses. Lu Han is about to huff with offense again, but then he adds, “The moment she sees you, she’ll begin mothering you and you’ll never escape.”  
  
Lu Han flutters over Chen’s head, waving a dusting of sparks into his hair as a farewell.  
  
“Hey!” Chen shouts. He tries to shake the sparks out of his hair even as they fade into nothing, but Lu Han is already halfway to the window. A little zing of bells rings out as he cackles at Chen’s outrage.  
  
As he flies out the window, Lu Han catches a glimpse of a head of gray curly hair and a cheerful sounding “there you are!”  
  
No one greets Lu Han when he comes through the other side of the smudge. He can feel his smile begin to fall as he looks out over the island, the mermaid still lounging on her rock in the bay and the leaves of the trees below still rustling in the breeze. It’s almost like he never left.  
  
✴  
  
It’s the smell of Never Land that’s the most different, Lu Han decides as he settles into his hollow that night to sleep. Chen’s town had been flooded in smells, from the ocean, the fish markets, the forest on the other side of the stream, and the house was filled with the scene of baked bread and tea and flowers.  
  
Compared to all that, Never Land smells… simple. The air is clean, only tangy with salt over the ocean, and only smelling of earth after a heavy rainfall.  
  
It’s not just the smells; the colors are different, more shades in the colors of grass, darker and lighter. Richer light. It’s like someone’s taken everything from Lu Han’s world and made it _more_.  
  
Lu Han flicks his fingers a few time, studying the sparks as they burst into light and then dissolve into nothing. Even they had been more in Chen’s world. Brighter.  
  
“Whacha doin’?” Chanyeol’s head appears, dangling from above the hollow. Lu Han jumps, the jingle he lets out loud and alarmed, and sends Chanyeol laughing. Somehow, his hat is managing to say on his head while he hangs from the ceiling of their hideout. The red feather stands out against the green material, bringing out the red in Chanyeol’s hair. “Where’d you go all day?” he asks, once the cloud of Lu Han’s surprised sparks has cleared. “You missed flying out with me to explore Skull Rock!”  
  
Chanyeol swings down and the dagger hanging from his belt flaps against his side as he lands, as lightly as a cat, on his feet. Crouching down, he begins telling Lu Han all about his adventure to Skull Rock.  
  
Part of Lu Han misses flying with Chanyeol as much as he used to. It’s what they do together, what they’ve always done together. But he and Chanyeol have already gone to Skull Rock together, many times, and Chanyeol just… doesn’t remember.  
  
“And then, _hiya!!_ ,” Chanyeol exclaims, in the middle of his story and miming a high-kick with a green-slippered foot. His eyes are glittering with childish enthusiasm, and there’s a place in Lu Han’s chest, right by his heart, where that look has made a home, fondness tugging at him whenever he sees it on Chanyeol’s face. “I fought them off — “  
  
Lu Han settles back, a small sigh sending a halo of sparks circling his head, to listen to Chanyeol’s tale and dream about new adventures of his own for tomorrow.  
  
✴  
  
One of the next times Lu Han ventures into the smudge, the sky over Chen’s house is cloudy. The sound of the tide is louder than Lu Han’s other visits, the waves slapping against the stone of the waterbreaks and the wind whipping between the houses and the forest of trees.  
  
The window where Chen usually sits is only open a tiny crack, but the wind is too strong to stay out in it much longer. Lu Han pulls his wings in as close to his back as he can manage and slips through it.  
  
Inside, the house seems empty, no Chen or his mother in sight. Lu Han still finds himself in awe of the colors and smells of this place. Sprinkles of flowers pattern the curtains hanging next to the window, and the flowers are blue, but they’re not just the blue Lu Han is used to seeing. They’re ten different shades of blue, with stems and leaves that are three new kinds of green that Lu Han, who lives in a forest, has never seen before.  
  
Every time Lu Han looks around in Chen’s world, there’s something new to find, and it has him itching to explore. The glass panes of the greenhouse door glint at him from the other end of the room. When he flies up to it, he can tell its already been pushed open, just wide enough for the tempting smell of humidity and soil to drift through the gap.  
  
Curiously, Lu Han pokes his head between past the edge of the door, craning his neck to look around. It’s darker inside than before, with the sun covered by clouds outside, but some of the flowers are still in bloom, their petals bright, sugary colors against their foliage.  
  
“Sneaking around, are we?”  
  
Lu Han jumps, knocking his temple against the door hard enough to cause a shower of sparks behind his eyes, as well as around his body. A little ways into the greenhouse, Chen is sitting on the ground, smirking up at Lu Han as he rubs the sore spot on his head.  
  
“I wondered if you’d come today, but it was too cold to wait at the window.“ He grins, the corners of his mouth curling up. “Somehow, I didn’t think you’d mind a little breaking and entering.”  
  
Offended, Lu Han huffs, his fingers still pressed to the sore spot on his head. It’s startling to think of Chen planning for him to visit, but Lu Han has been flying into the smudge almost every day for two weeks, so it’s not completely surprising that Chen’s to come to expect him. Lu Han himself is already used to coming here, the days when he doesn’t feel dull in the face of so much newness.  
  
Slipping the rest of the way into the greenhouse, Lu Han flies over to where Chen is sitting. He’s got flowers piled next to him, tiny compared to some of the others around the greenhouse, but still almost as large as Chen’s palm.  
  
“Sit down and make yourself useful,” Chen says, picking up a couple of the flowers. He hands them off to Lu Han once he’s folded his wings into his back and settled onto the floor.  
  
Lu Han looks down at the them. Their petals are a yellow that’s so light it’s almost white, velvety soft when Lu Han rubs them between his fingers.  
  
“I’m making daisy chains.” Chen holds up a few of the flowers he’s linked by their stems in explanation. “I mean, these aren’t daisies. It’s the wrong time of year for them, but the chain will look the same.”  
  
Lu Han watches carefully as Chen knots the stem of one flower tightly around the base of the next, fingers fumbling to imitate him. The stems are smooth, slipping out of his grip as Lu Han tries to tie them and fails. Chen laughs, the sound bubbling from his mouth so brightly it makes Lu Han stop and stare.  
  
“Try it like this.” He leans forward, the frilling collar of his shirt gaping open to show the skin of his throat, the curve of his Adam’s apple. Lu Han watches him swallow, the place where Chen’s voice comes from moving under the skin. Unaware of how he’s being watched, Chen takes hold of Lu Han’s hands and guides him through the motions. Together they loop the flower stem tight enough to stay in place around the bottom of the next flower, fingers slipping against each other.  
  
Chen’s hands are warm and dry compared to the air of the greenhouse, the same size as Lu Han’s, and Lu Han is used to sitting in people’s palms, not touching them with his own.  
  
“I was born out of a flower, you know, “ Chen says after he sits back again, linking the flowers together so efficiently that it makes Lu Han wonder how often Chen does this, alone in the greenhouse.  
  
Surprised, Lu Han looks up at Chen’s face with wide eyes.  
  
“Not one of these,” Chen waggles the flowers in his hands, chain hanging down and swinging back and forth, “but a big orange lily. My mother says she got the seed for it from a witch.”  
  
Chen stops tying flower stems and runs his fingers over the petals, mouth curling downward. “I think that’s one of the reasons why she doesn’t take me anywhere. The other people in the town probably wouldn’t like me if they knew i came from a witch. They’re not so happy about magic stuff here, I guess.”  
  
Lu Han looks down at his own lap, sees the way the skin of his arms and chest glows with him just sitting there, so full of magic the sparks burst of out him whenever he moves.  
  
Almost to himself, Chen mumbles, “Sometimes, I wonder if she’s ashamed of me.”  
  
Startled by the sudden change in Chen’s mood, Lu Han reaches out, wanting to comfort him with a touch, more frustrated than usual that he can’t _say_ anything. There’s something lodged in his throat, a lump of anticipation or nerves, maybe — but a small plume of sparks lights up at the motion of Lu Han’s arm, catching Chen’s eye and attention, and the moment is broken.  
  
Chen clears his throat, the shape of his mouth evening out again. “I think it should be long enough,” he says, taking the couple flowers Lu Han has managed to link together into his own lap and joining them with the others. “There!” Too quickly for Lu Han to move away, Chen holds it up, a circle of pale yellow flowers hanging between his hands, and sets it on top of Lu Han’s head.  
  
“Now you look like a proper fairy,” Chen says smugly, and Lu Han frowns at him, reaching up to tug it off, because he’s _not a fairy_. Chen’s hand stops him. “No, don’t. I made it for you.”  
  
He’s smiling as he fixes the crown of flowers so that it sits right on Lu Han’s head, but Lu Han thinks Chen’s eyes still look kind of sad. “I know I talk a lot but I’ve never really had anyone to talk to so it’s… nice. When you come here, I mean.”  
  
Lu Han’s face feels hot all of a sudden, the cool, humid air a relief against his skin, and the lump is climbing back up his throat, fighting his anxious swallows.  
  
Still preoccupied with fixing the flowers in Lu Han’s hair, Chen doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t have anything to give but flowers, really,” he says, smiling up at Lu Han, “but I was born from one, so I know they must be special. Think of it as a gift.”  
  
Chen’s eyes are a deep shade of brown that Lu Han has never seen before.  
  
That night, when Lu Han flies back to into Never Land, he sits in his hollow and thinks about Chen. The curling corners of his mouth, his laugh, his eyes. The color of Chen’s eyes isn’t like soil, or sand still wet from the receding tide, or the bark of a tree…  
  
Lu Han falls asleep cradling the flower chain carefully in his hands.  
  
✴  
  
“You seem kind of down. Well, as much as you can be with those wings.” Chen makes a swooping motion with his hand like a bird dipping through the air above where he’s lying, and Lu Han’s wings shiver in the breeze that comes past the open window as they hang folded down his back.  
  
Though the sun is out, shining down on the windowsill where Lu Han and Chen are lounging, the air is crisp with the chill of the ocean. The leaves of the trees behind Chen’s house have dried out, changing from green to yellow and orange. Lu Han’s never seen that before. Never Land is forever green, the foliage of the trees never dying, new flowers blooming daily. Lu Han has carefully watched the leaves change here each day when he comes through the smudge.  
  
He stares out at them as Chen talks, the loud croaking of the toad that lives next to the stream serving as punctuation, but he’s not really seeing anything. Lu Han is too distracted to think about which colors of the leaves he’s never seen before.  
  
Something pokes Lu Han in the side, startling his eyes back into focus.  
  
Chen’s pushed himself up on his elbows to get a better look at Lu Han, the toes of his bare foot digging into Lu Han’s side. Lu Han frowns when Chen wiggles his toes, as though trying to tickle him, and reaches down to push the foot away. There’s a struggle, Chen letting out a peal of laughter as Lu Han takes ahold of Chen’s ankle to keep the tickling toes from touching his stomach.  
  
In the light, their skin looks different together. Lu Han’s is luminous even without the sunlight, pale with a dusting of gold no matter how much time he spends outside. Chen’s skin doesn’t glimmer, and he’s gotten a bit of a tan from all his time spent with his feet hanging into the window box, but his skin is smooth in Lu Han’s grasp, radiant in a way that has nothing to do with magic. Lu Han can see the sprinkling of hair on Chen’s shins where the leg of his trousers has risen up with his foot held at this angle. He wonders what the texture would feel like under his fingertips.  
  
“Alright, alright,” Chen says, not seeming to notice Lu Han’s scrutiny. He tugs his ankle out of Lu Han’s grip and sits up, legs criss-crossing underneath him. “You don’t have to tell me —“ he laughs, quietly enough that Lu Han thinks it must be to himself and not at Lu Han, “You can’t really, I guess, but there must be something bothering you. You’ve lost your sparks.”  
  
Lu Han frowns and waves Chen off with a hand, but sure enough, though his skin shimmers golden, there’s no shower of sparks that follows the movement.  
  
Sighing, Lu Han glances back at color-changing leaves rustling dryly from across the stream.  
  
When he’d gone back to Never Land the night before, Chanyeol was all abuzz about someone he’d seen on a solo trip into the city. He’d chattered in his incessantly exuberant way about dark black hair and tiny hands until Lu Han had flown off to his hollow in a snit, searching for some peace and quiet.  
  
Chen’s world is rarely very quiet. Even on the edge of town, there’s still the rolling of the surf and the noises of the townspeople, along with the sounds of the stream and the forest beyond.  
  
“There’s really nothing wrong?” Chen looks up at Lu Han through the hair hanging hanging into his eyes. His face is so earnest that Lu Han actually opens his mouth to tell him about Chanyeol, the words bubbling up in his throat — but all that comes out is the tinkling of bells.  
  
Lu Han breathes out hard through his nose, cutting off the sound abruptly. The unspoken words are balling up in his throat, making it hard to swallow. The hand that he used to hold Chen’s ankle curls into a fist of frustration.  
  
Lu Han has never been able to speak, but for just a moment, he’d forgotten.  
  
“If there’s something I can do, you could just… show me? Like a mime, maybe?” Chen waggles his fingers, the corners his mouth dipping for a moment before he breaks out into a hesitant smile.  
  
Coming here is supposed to be Lu Han’s escape, but with the noises all around and Chen’s smile staring him in the face, Lu Han’s mind is still wrapped up in Chanyeol’s excited words from last night, and it’s drowning out everything else.  
  
Lu Han has been with Chanyeol for as long as he can remember and no one’s ever managed to permanently come between them. Even though they have the Lost Boys, and the people they watch sometimes in the city, it’s always been just them in the end.  
  
It’s just that there was something in Chanyeol’s eyes when he talked about that boy from the city that takes the lump of unspoken words in Lu Han’s throat and twists.  
  
Realizing that Chen is still watching him, Lu Han tries to swallow again, blinking rapidly to get the image of Chanyeol out of his head. There are birds in the trees Lu Han has been staring at, chirruping out little songs to each other as they flit around the branches, and it reminds Lu Han of the day he first saw Chen, of the way he’d been singing.  
  
He uncurls his fingers from where they’re fisted against his thigh, knuckles glad for the relief, and taps the top of Chen’s bare foot to signal that he has something to tell him.  
  
Chen’s eyebrows raise, all hesitancy gone, and he leans forward.  
  
Lu Han points at his throat, fingertip touching the jut of his own Adam’s apple.  
  
“What, do you need some water?” Chen doesn’t get it, and so Lu Han tries again, this time pointing at Chen’s throat instead.  
  
Chen looks down at Lu Han’s wrist, eyes crossing. “Your throat hurts?”  
  
Lu Han lets out a frustrated breath, shaking his head. One or two sparks drift in the air from the movement, glittering and dissolving in the sunlight.  
  
“Don’t get mad at me!” Chen says, pulling his chin back so he can see more of the hand Lu Han’s got pointed at his neck. “It’s not my fault I don’t speak fairy.”  
  
Incensed, Lu Han narrows his eyes and pokes Chen in the throat, where his finger had been pointing. He is _not_ a fairy.  
  
Chen makes a choking noise, hands clutching his neck as he starts backward, and Lu Han finds himself laughing at the shocked look on his face. There’s a plum of sparks that bursts from him along with the jingling sound, and he looks around, startled in mid-laugh at their sudden reappearance.  
  
“Hey,” Chen says, “your sparks are back.” He’s still rubbing at his throat with one hand, while the other reaches out, trying to pop one of the sparks like it’s a bubble. It disappears before he can touch it, and Chen frowns at the empty space it leaves.  
  
Lu Han considers him, the frills of his shirt collar askew and his hair sweeping across his forehead. Chen says his mother never lets him out of the house, but he’s got an adventurous look to him anyway, like he’d fit right in as a sailor on the deck of a ship or an explorer hiking a path through a forest.  
  
From what Lu Han has seen of his own face in the reflections of the still pools on the island, he knows he doesn’t look adventurous in the slightest. He’s got daintily pointed ears and wide, innocent eyes, and the filmy gold of his wings looks delicate enough that they might tear at the slightest touch.  
  
Lu Han has been on many adventures and Chen on none, but still, Chen has none of that air fragility about him. The only similarity between them is their size.  
  
“What?” Chen blinks at him. “Do I have something on my face?”  
  
Shaking his head again, Lu Han opens his mouth and motions with his hand like there’s sound coming out, and then points at Chen.  
  
Finally, Chen gets it, face lighting up with understanding. “Ohhh, you want me to— to sing?”  
  
Lu Han nods, relieved that he’d gotten his point across at last.  
  
“I don’t know if I still can, since you tried to poke out my voice box earlier.” Chen quips, clearing his throat and shooting Lu Han a look. Lu Han grins back unrepentantly, because Chen had deserved it.  
  
Then Chen opens his mouth, and begins to sing.  
  
Lu Han remembers what he’d thought the first time he heard Chen sing, of the sandy bottoms of pools glittering with constellations. Today he sounds like an empty blue sky disappearing into the ocean’s horizon, foam playing on the tips of each wave.  
  
The flowers in the window box have begun to wilt, the blooms no longer standing tall enough to brush Chen’s feet as they dangle over the edge of the sill. Lu Han lays back onto the warm wood instead, soaking up the sunlight and the sound of Chen’s voice. The tips of his toes are touching the leg of Chen’s pants, the velvety fabric soft, allowing him to feel every time Chen shifts as he sings.  
  
Lu Han might almost be asleep by they time Chen stops singing. The wind is playing with his hair and the edges of the cloth he wears around his waist. Each breeze is a tickling touch against his skin, but Lu Han is warm in the sunlight, and too relaxed to move. His mind is blissfully empty.  
  
There’s a long stretch of quiet, Chen’s leg motionless against Lu Han’s toes as the sounds of the outdoors take over where Chen left off. The birds call to each other again, a little tune that sounds almost like the melody Chen had been singing, while the crickets hiding in the tall grasses chirp along.  
  
“I wonder,” Chen says softly, so softly Lu Han knows that Chen must think he’s really asleep, “I wonder about what you’d say if you could talk to me.”  
  
There’s a touch to Lu Han’s calf, the light press of a palm resting on the sun-warmed skin. Lu Han doesn’t move, not wanting to embarrass Chen, and also because he’s not sure what to do.  
  
Lu Han has never been able to speak. All his thoughts and feelings are kept bottled up inside his tiny body with no one to listen but himself. He’s always assumed that it didn’t matter. That no one would want to hear what he had to say anyway.  
  
The idea of being heard is suddenly dizzyingly scary as Chen’s words sink in. The lump of unsaid words is thick in Lu Han’s throat again, bordering on painful.  
  
“I wonder about it a lot,” Chen murmurs, voice almost lost to the breeze. “I think you’d be interesting to talk to.”  
  
The touch disappears, but it leaves goosebumps behind, where the skin is exposed to the cooler air. Still, Lu Han doesn’t move. He hears Chen’s clothing rustling as he moves around, and when Lu Han risks a peek between his eyelashes, Chen is curled up beside him, already sleeping like a cat in the afternoon sun.  
  
Lu Han shifts slightly, folding up an arm to pillow his head on. His mind is noisy again, but this time, the voice that’s running through his head isn’t Chanyeol’s.  
  
✴  
  
The second star on the right is bright that night.  
  
Below Lu Han, the lights of the city are polka-dots in the darkness, and he can see Chanyeol’s eyes and wide smile shining in the light of the moon.  
  
“Wait till you see him, Tink. You’re not gonna believe that someone so cute can be a real person.” Chanyeol is eager and pink-cheeked, like he always gets when they fly into the city. Before they left Never Land, he’d spent an unusual amount of time trying to tame his orange curls to lie right under hat and smoothing the red feather so that it looked sleek and new.  
  
The night air has already made a mess of Chanyeol’s hair, but whatever magic keeps Chanyeol’s hat on his head has also kept the feather unruffled as they fly.  
  
“There!” Chanyeol crows, pointing at one roof in the sea of houses. Unlike Chen’s, this one has black shingles, made of slate, and looks posh instead of cozy, with powder blue shutters and a turret off to one side.  
  
Chanyeol lands lightly on the ridge of the roof, the green slippers on his feet muffling any sounds as he slides down the sloping edge. “His bedroom’s over here.”  
  
Lu Han flies over, sparks trailing after him, as Chanyeol hangs over the edge of the roof to get a good look into the window below.  
  
The curtains are open behind the glass, moonlight streaming into the room, and Lu Han can see the shape of a boy curled up in the middle of the bed along the far wall. Chanyeol swings down, dangling by his fingertips from the drainpipe as he gets a footing on the flatter part of the roof in front of the window.  
  
“What’d’ya think, Tink?” he whispers, leaning so close his nose is almost pressed to the glass. Lu Han doesn’t think the boy looks like much and tells Chanyeol so with a shower of sparks. Chanyeol’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as he waves them away. “Don’t be like that. It’ll be fun!”  
  
The window is unlocked. Chanyeol presses his fingers to the edges of the glass, pushing the window up high enough to stick his head into the room. Lu Han lingers outside, peeking around the edge.  
  
The sound of the window opening seems to startle the boy out of sleep. He bolts upright, rubbing at his eyes with a fist and squinting at Chanyeol’s silhouette.  
  
“Who’s there?” he calls, voice wary and still thick with sleep.  
  
With the window all the way up, Chanyeol hoists himself onto the sill. The moonlight casts a long shadow across the floor, the shape of his hat and feather stretched out over the carpet, and the boy gasps.  
  
“Are you a _burglar?_ The boy sounds more disbelieving than afraid. Lu Han cranes his neck to get a better look as he slides out of his bed, stuff animal clutched to his chest. “Out of all the houses on the street, you picked _my room_ to burgle?”  
  
Chanyeol’s laugh seems louder than usual in the darkness and he jumps off the windowsill into the room, smiling brightly and looking around.  
  
The boy’s eyes narrow. “If you come any closer I’ll break your face with my teddy bear, just see if I don’t,” he growls, holding out his bear menacingly, and his face looks so dangerous that Lu Han believes him.  
  
“Whoa, whoa,” Chanyeol says, waving his arms like a windmill, as if to calm the boy down. “I’m not here to burgle you.”  
  
“Well then you should get out,” the boy says, shooing at Chanyeol with the bear in his hands so violently that Chanyeol jumps back, knocking his shins on the edge of the window and tumbling over the edge. Luckily, he catches himself, arms flapping in the air like wings as he gets airborne again, floating just outside the window.  
  
“You can just go creep around someone else’s room, then,” the boy tells Chanyeol, still brandishing the bear with one hand as he grabs the curtains with the other.  
  
“Hey, I haven’t told you why I’m here!” The boy raises his eyebrows and Chanyeol grins at him. “You’re coming back to Never Land to be my new mother.”  
  
Hissing in outrage, the boy smashes his teddy bear into Chanyeol’s face. “Are you stupid or something? I’m not supposed to talk to strangers or crazy people, and I’m definitely not going to be someone’s _mother_.”  
  
When he takes the bear back, Chanyeol looks stunned, tongue licking out as he tries to get rid of the stuffed animal taste.  
  
“You’re so cute,” he coos once his eyes focus again, reaching out like he’s going to pat the boy on the head.  
  
The boy lets out a growl, batting Chanyeol’s hand away hard enough that Lu Han can hear the smack. Then, too short to be able to reach the window sash, the boy drags the curtains shut.  
  
Chanyeol blinks for a moment in shock, and looks at Lu Han, who shrugs. If the boy doesn’t want to come back with them, then so much the better.  
  
Not easily discouraged, Chanyeol sticks his head through the gap in the middle of the curtains, head disappearing from Lu Han’s sight. “I’m really fun, I promise!” Lu Han hears him say. “And not strange at all!”  
  
“You broke into my room in the middle of the night! That’s strange!”  
  
“I just wanted to say hi.” Chanyeol sounds sulky. When he pulls his head out from between the curtains again, his mouth is soft with a pout, eyes glassy.  
  
He droops where he’s floating in the air. Even his red feather seems to go limp, and Lu Han flies over to land on his shoulder, putting a comforting hand on Chanyeol’s cheek.  
  
From behind the curtains, Lu Han hears the boy let out a frustrated sound before pulling them open again. His cheeks are pink, probably with frustration.  
  
“How old are you?” the boy asks suspiciously, and Chanyeol shrugs, eyes still shiny and hurt-looking.  
  
“I dunno, how old are you?”  
  
“Eleven.”  
  
Chanyeol’s face brightens up at getting an answer. “Great, then me too!”  
  
Lu Han snorts, because Chanyeol is _much_ older than eleven, only he never ages, and the burst of sparks that accompanies his laughter catches the boy’s attention.  
  
“What is this? Your pet fairy?”  
  
Jumping off of Chanyeol’s shoulder, Lu Han flies angrily at the boy’s face, trying to blind him with a shower of sparks.  
  
“What the — “ The boy flails his bear, barely missing knocking Lu Han out of the air, and Lu Han chimes furiously, tempted to fly up and poke the boy in the eye.  
  
“He’s not a fairy,” Chanyeol laughs, scooping Lu Han up to keep him from charging at the boy’s face again. Lu Han struggles, but he’s no match for Chanyeol’s big fingers. “He’s a pixie and my friend. They’re very magical, pixies. You’re lucky to meet one.”  
  
“Really,” the boy says disbelievingly, and Lu Han _glares_ , letting out another threatening jingle.  
  
Chanyeol, on the other hand, nods so eagerly that his wild curls flop against his forehead beneath the brim of his hat. “They help people fly with their pixie dust! See, they don’t have wings, or well, Lu Han…” Chanyeol trails off from his tumble of words, brow furrowing as he stares at Lu Han’s wings like he’s forgotten something he really should know. Lu Han’s chest feels heavy again. “Lu Han does, for… some reason, but they usually don’t, so they can use their pixie dust to fly!”  
  
“So you’re saying that if that thing,” he points at Lu Han, “sprinkles me with its magic dust, I’ll be able to fly like you.”  
  
Chanyeol nods again enthusiastically, probably just glad he’s not getting something mashed into his face.  
  
The boy crosses his arms, his bear dangling from one hand. “Okay, show me.”  
  
Chanyeol beams. Lu Han, however, does not like this at all. He tries to fly off of Chanyeol’s palm, but Chanyeol’s already got ahold of him. The world spins as Chanyeol shakes him gently over the boy’s head until a shower of sparks rains down into his hair.  
  
“So there’s that,” Chanyeol says, releasing a dizzy Lu Han onto the windowsill. “Then you need a really good thought, one that’s so good it makes you feel like you could fly. You got one?”  
  
Lu Han shakes his head, still feeling a little spin-y and trying to reorient himself as he listens to Chanyeol.  
  
“Yeah,” the boy says, “I’m imagining that you fell out the window and off the roof.”  
  
He sounds dead serious to Lu Han, but Chanyeol lets out a bubble of laughter, unintimidated. “And so now you just gotta step out here!”  
  
There’s a skeptical silence. Finally feeling steady again, Lu Han glances up at the boy. People always look a little brighter once they’ve been sprinkled with pixie dust, like they’ve caught stars in their eyes. Sure enough, the boy still looks vaguely murderous, but there’s a curiosity about him that wasn’t there before.  
  
“You want me… to step out the window.”  
  
“You’re not gonna fall! C’mon, try it.” Chanyeol reaches out a hand for the boy to take, helping him up onto the windowsill. Lu Han flies up, not wanting to risk being stepped on, and watches from beyond the house. “If you trust you’ll be able to fly, you will. All it takes is faith, trust, and pixie dust!”  
  
The boy reluctantly takes ahold of Chanyeol’s hand, bare toes right at the edge of the window. He looks down, grip going white-knuckled. “If I fall, I’m going to kill you,” he says to Chanyeol, eyes tightly closed, and takes a step out into thin air.  
  
“Oh,” he says after a moment, looking around first with one eye and then the other. “That’s not so bad.”  
  
“Flying is the best thing in the whole _world_ ,” Chanyeol says, grinning madly.  
  
The boy’s pajamas, blue sleep pants and a big matching shirt with buttons down its front, ripple against his body in the light breeze. He shivers, seeming to notice that he’s still holding Chanyeol’s hand, and drops it so he can clutch his bear to his chest for warmth.  
  
“So this Never Land place,” he asks curiously, drifting from side to side in the air as though trying his newfound ability out. “It’s where you live?”  
  
“Uh huh.” Chanyeol points up at the sky. “If you fly up towards the second star on the right, you come to it in no time.”  
  
“And if I,” the boy kicks his feet like he’s swimming, propelling himself around Chanyeol’s side, “wanted to see it, could I come right back home?”  
  
Chanyeol shrugs, twisting around to follow the boy with his eyes. “If you want to, I guess?”  
  
Lu Han, still hovering a little ways out, shakes his head. People don’t often come back from Never Land. But it’s not Chanyeol’s fault. He’s just an eternally young boy who can’t understand why anyone would want to leave.  
  
The boy stops his swimming motions, seeming to realize that he can move without them, and flies closer to Chanyeol, getting a better look at his face. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Sometimes people call me Peter Pan, but to you, it’s Chanyeol.”  
  
“I’m Kyungsoo,” the boy says. Chanyeol smiles over at him with that eager smile of his and the heaviness twists in Lu Han’s chest. He wishes Chanyeol had never opened Kyungsoo’s window.  
  
Kyungsoo flicks one of Chanyeol’s pointed ears, making him yelp. “Alright then, Peter Panyeol. Let’s go.”  
  
✴  
  
Kyungsoo does not go right back home after visiting Never Land. Lu Han knows first hand how hard it is to dislike Chanyeol and the Lost Boys once given the chance to get to know them. Even someone like Kyungsoo, who has the facial expressions of Skull Rock, looks intrigued when the boys start digging into an invisible feast.  
  
Chanyeol is totally engrossed in Kyungsoo’s presence. He spends all his time showing him around the island and trying to coax out his smiles, and doesn’t seem to notice when Lu Han doesn’t come along.  
  
It’s difficult not to escape through the smudge to Chen’s house as soon as he wakes each morning. Lu Han doesn’t want to be a bother or be there so much that Chen gets sick of him, so he flies out to the Mermaid’s Lagoon to watch the sun climb higher into the sky.  
  
Out in the water, the mermaids wave at him happily, scaled tails flashing as they flick them in and out of the water playfully. A few of them are already sunning themselves and they sing together as they comb through the long hair that cloaks the bare skin of their human upper bodies. The chorus of their voices is beautiful enough, matching the tempo of the waves that lap at the shoreline, but Lu Han knows firsthand how dangerous mermaids can be, and only flies above the sandy beach, skirting the water.  
  
After Chen’s singing helped him the other day, Lu Han hoped that the mermaid’s songs would have the same effect. He drifts down until he can feel the warm sand of the beach beneath his feet, the grains trickling between his toes. Never Land sand is all the same golden-yellow color, just like the leaves are all similar shades of green, and Lu Han used to be so happy here on the island.  
  
The mermaid’s song changes to something slower, dreamier, but Lu Han’s head isn’t any clearer than when he’d woke up in his hollow that morning. He wriggles his toes in the sand one more time, reaching down to brush the stray grains off his ankles, before taking off again. The mermaid’s call after him, the little bit of siren’s magic pulling at him. Thankfully, Lu Han is magical enough himself that their call has no real effect on him, and he flies off towards the smudge in the sky.  
  
Once he makes it through (a crushing weight and too many missed breaths, dry eyes), he sees the clouds on the verge of rain and Chen’s window open, as though it’s been waiting for him to arrive. Chen isn’t on the windowsill, though, and Lu Han peeks inside, catching sight of him by the other window, where Lu Han thinks his makeshift bedroom is.  
  
He’s got something in his hands, fluffy and white in a way that reminds Lu Han of the clouds in Never Land’s sky. He flies closer to get a better look.  
  
The shape of it is like the bear Kyungsoo had been holding the night Lu Han met him, but with much longer ears. He jingles curiously, tapping Chen on the shoulder, and Chen flails in surprise, falling off the edge of the walnut half-shell he’d been perched on with a screech.  
  
“That was payback for the thing with the door, wasn’t it?” he asks when he’s had a chance to catch his breath. He rubs the place on his bottom where he’d landed and glares at Lu Han, who is clutching a stitch in his side from laughter with one hand and pointing at Chen mockingly with the other. “Yeah, yeah. My pain is hilarious.”  
  
He moves to set the ball of fluff down into the walnut shell, and Lu Han stops laughing abruptly to peer over the edge at it curiously.  
  
“It’s a bunny,” Chen says, reaching out to straighten its ears. “I made it out of the cotton balls my mother uses to pad my bed.”  
  
Inside the shell, Chen’s bed is neatly made, patterned blanket smoothed out over a fluffy-looking padding.  
  
“I’ve made lots of things,” Chen goes on. “There’s not much for me to do here, you know. I even made a person, since there wasn’t anyone me-sized around.”  
  
For some reason, that makes Lu Han sad. He’s never met someone small like him before Chen, but at least Lu Han had had Chanyeol and the Lost Boys. At least he wasn’t alone.  
  
Chen walks over to the large jewelry box sitting across from the bed and uses both hands to pull one of the drawers open. “Once I got into a duel with a mouse.” He rummages around inside the drawer for a moment before pulling out a shiny piece of metal. “I used this needle as a sword and stuff.” Chen swipes at the air with the needle a couple of times, making a swishing sound as it cuts through the air. Chanyeol’s dagger is tiny in proportion to his big body, small enough not to get in the way where it hangs from his belt, but the needle is as long as one of Chen’s arms, and Lu Han is suitably impressed at the idea of Chen valiantly fighting off a mouse.  
  
“They live in the walls and I found them when I was exploring the kitchen, but as long as I give them a little cheese every once and a while and keep my distance, it’s okay. If I get too close, they sniff me all over and try to kiss me, and it tickles.” Chen lolls out his tongue, gagging with disgust at the thought.  
  
Lu Han gives a little shudder when he imagines how the furry whiskers of a mouse would feel on his face.  
  
Chen twirls the needle in his hand thoughtfully. “The mice are just trying to make friends so we don’t have to fight anymore, I think, but my mom says kissing is special and you should only do it with people you really like.”  
  
Lu Han has only ever seen kissing on their trips into the city, parents kissing their children goodnight on their foreheads and then each other on the mouth. Both kinds of kisses do seem kind of special, a moment between two people that puts Lu Han on the other side of the glass, on the outside looking in.  
  
Lu Han lifts himself up in the air a bit with his wings so that he can flop back down onto Chen’s bed, enjoying the way he bounces slightly, the edges of the blanket wrinkling around him.  
  
“Hey!” Chen says, dropping the needle back into the drawer and launching himself toward the bed. Lu Han scrambles back, trying to make sure he isn’t squished by Chen’s flying body, ringing bell sounds leaving his mouth in alarm. The impact leaves them tangled anyway, with Chen’s elbows jabbing Lu Han in the stomach and their foreheads knocking together as the walnut shell rocks back and forth precariously. Eventually, they settle down next to each other, the fluffy bunny nestled between them as Chen chatters about some of his other adventures around the house.  
  
“Sometimes I use the other half of this shell as a boat in the bathroom sink, with one of mother’s teaspoons as a paddle.” He wriggles when he talks, making big motions with his hands that make the frills of his sleeves waggle and bring them closer together on top of the blanket, so Lu Han can see the annoyance in Chen’s eyes when he adds, “My mom doesn’t like it very much, says it’s dangerous.”  
  
Chen’s bed faces the window, so Lu Han hears clearly when the first of the raindrops hits the glass, sliding down the pane wetly, and sits up in alarm.  
  
The sudden movement throws both of them off balance and the shell rocks, tips, and sends both he and Chen sprawling onto the windowsill.  
  
“Ouch!” Chen shouts right in Lu Han’s ear when his chin smacks Lu Han’s shoulder hard, but Lu Han is too distracted to worry about anything but the rain coming down outside. He scrambles to his feet, rushing over to press his nose against the glass wretchedly.  
  
Chen comes up behind him, trying to look over Lu Han’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”  
  
Lu Han’s wings go limp on his back and he knocks his forehead against the window with a sad _thunk!_  
  
Suddenly, the front door of the house bursts open in a flurry of bags and skirts. “I hurried back as fast as I could, but the rain this fall has been unbelievable! Now the shopping is all wet!”  
  
“Oh no.” Chen bumps into Lu Han’s back as he tries to whirl around, hissing, “It’s my mom, you have to leave!”  
  
In the kitchen, Chen’s mother is making a racket unpacking her bags, and Lu Han shakes his head helplessly, pointing out at the rainclouds.  
  
“What does that mean?” Chen looks between Lu Han and the rain coming down and must notice his immobile wings. “Wait, you can’t fly in the rain?”  
  
Lu Han looks at Chen sadly as his mother calls out, “Chen, who are you talking to? Chen?”  
  
There’s the click of her shoes as she walks into the living room, and Chen sighs with resignation. “I guess it had to happen sometime.”  
  
“Oh!” Chen’s mother gasps in surprise once she catches sight of Lu Han. “I didn’t know you had a guest, Chen.”  
  
“Yeah, this is my, uh, friend.” Chen gestures to him awkwardly, because of course, Lu Han has never been able to tell Chen his name. “He comes here to visit because we’re the same size? Yes.”  
  
Chen’s mother is old enough to have some lines on her face, but she’s pretty anyway, with light eyes and dark curly hair that’s streaked with gray at her temples. “How did he— “ Her eyes skim over Lu Han’s currently useless wings, the lines around her mouth tightening. “Oh yes, of course. You’re a fairy.” She nods like this explains why there is a miniature stranger in her house.  
  
Lu Han wants to send up an angry cloud of sparks in outrage, but he also doesn’t want to make a bad impression on Chen’s mother and get kicked out into the rain with no way back home. Instead, he settles for frowning and crossing his arms.  
  
Chen laughs at him, probably thinking of the day in the greenhouse when he’d made Lu Han a daisy chain to wear, and Lu Han’s frown deepens.  
  
Chen’s mother is still looking Lu Han over, her face a bit pink under the unsettled expression she’s wearing. Lu Han supposes it must be from rushing home in the storm. “Chen, why don’t you lend your friend some pants while I put the rest of the shopping away? I don’t think a shirt will fit over those wings, but he must be cold in that… outfit.”  
  
Chen rolls his eyes, going over to dig in another one of his drawers as his mother ducks back into the kitchen. The pants he presses into Lu Han’s arms are soft and brown, a pair Lu Han thinks he’s seen before.  
  
“I guess I’ll have to wash them, because there’s no way I’m lending you a pair of underpants.” Lu Han isn’t really sure what Chen means, but he nods anyway, holding the trousers tight to his chest  
  
He hides behind the jewelry box to change, shivering at the way the pants feel as they slide up his legs. Fumbling with the unfamiliar fastening, Lu Han’s fingers slip on the buttons some before he gets it right. There’s no way for him to see how he looks, except by peering down at the way the gold of his stomach disappears under the dark brown waistband of the trousers.  
  
It’s more strange than bad, but Lu Han’s cheeks are still hot with embarrassment when he comes back out from behind the jewelry box again.  
  
“The green thing looked better on you,” Chen says after a moment, eyeing the bits of Lu Han’s ankles left bare by his pants. Standing on two feet, Lu Han is taller than Chen, and it’s obvious Chen doesn’t like it.  
  
Lu Han rubs his palms over his thighs, feeling the texture of the fabric instead of skin, and nods in agreement. If he flew back to Never Land like this, he would miss the way the wind whips around his bare knees, but it is kind of nice to know what Chen feels like in his clothes, covered in fabric all over.  
  
“That’s much better,” Chen’s mother says when she comes back out from the kitchen with an apron on, nodding at Lu Han’s state of dress approvingly. She glances at Chen, mouth going tight again. “How long will your friend be staying?”  
  
“Until the rain stops, I guess,” Chen says, looking over his shoulder at the storm outside. “He can’t fly in the rain.”  
  
“I see.” She sets something down on the sill. “I brought you out two thimbles of tea, and I can get you something for lunch if you’re hungry.”  
  
Chen rubs his belly, grinning up at her and drawing the words out as he whines, “I’m soooo hungryyyy.”  
  
His tone seems to touch something beyond the anxious lines of her face. Reaching down, she pats Chen’s head fondly. “There’s the Chenbelina I know.”  
  
Once Chen’s mother is gone again, Chen flops down onto the windowsill, picking up one of the metal cups. Lu Han does the same with the other, looking down at the liquid in it curiously. The tea is hot enough to be steaming, curls of it coming up to warm his nose.  
  
“I wonder what she’ll say about this after you leave,” Chen muses, taking a sip. “I know it’s because she cares about me but sometimes she just… she never lets me go anywhere because she’s worried I’ll get hurt, so I’m stuck in this house, singing out the window to the toads to get some fresh air.” He pulls his legs into his chest, resting his chin on his knees and wrapping his arms around so his cup is right under his mouth. “I don’t know. I guess being loved can be suffocating sometimes?”  
  
Lu Han shrugs with only one shoulder, staring down at his cup. He doesn’t know how it feels to be loved, but then he thinks of Chanyeol, and the agonizing twist he feels in his chest when Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo. Maybe loving someone else can be just as suffocating.  
  
The words inside of him are piling up again, clogging his throat the way they always seem to do when he’s around Chen. Whenever Chen speaks, Lu Han always finds that he has so much to say back, but no way to say it. Instead, he takes a sip from the thimble to wet his mouth and tinkles agreeably at the taste. The tea warms him all the way down to his toes when he swallows.  
  
The rain beats harder at the glass, making the storm noisy inside, and Chen pokes at Lu Han’s thigh through the borrowed pants. “It’s probably a good thing you changed,” he says. He skims a hand over to play with a loose thread trailing out of one of the inner seams. Lu Han still isn’t used to the way touch feels through the fabric. “That storm doesn’t look like it’s going to be letting up any time soon, so you might be here for a while.”  
  
Lu Han nods, twisting his cup around in his hands, and tries not to wonder whether anyone in Never Land will miss him.


	2. Part 2

Even though the air in Never Land is lighter than in Chen’s world, Lu Han is beginning to find it stifling.

Kyungsoo is there still, flying out to Skull Rock with Chanyeol or watching from the shore of Pirate’s Cove as Chanyeol teases Captain Hook on his ship further out in the water.

In an attempt to gain a smile, Chanyeol starts bringing Kyungsoo flowers from around the island, rare ones from up near the Indian Camp and from the Mermaid’s Lagoon, where the girls keep them to decorate their hair.

He’s hardly seen Chanyeol lately, and Lu Han knows that if it weren’t for Chen knowing and believing him in, he would be fading away into nothing. The fact that Chanyeol would let that happen makes Lu Han sick to his stomach, heavy insides wrenching with betrayal more and more with every smile Chanyeol gives to Kyungsoo instead of him.

Lu Han hears Kyungsoo and Chanyeol talking one evening as he makes his way back to his hollow. Chanyeol’s brought him a whole bouquet of primary colors this time, flowers from all over the island that he must have painstakingly collected. Kyungsoo doesn’t seem very impressed.

He looks down at the flowers and then up at Chanyeol’s grinning face. “I’m not going to kiss you in gratitude or something.”

Chanyeol’s eyes go uneven as he wrinkles his nose. “Kiss?”

“Yeah, you know, when adults put their mouths together and stuff because they love each other.”

Chanyeol thinks on this for a moment while Kyungsoo picks at the petals, studying them carefully. From where he’s lurking, Lu Han thinks he can see a slight smile on Kyungsoo’s face, like he’s really pleased by Chanyeol’s bouquet, but keeping it hidden from Chanyeol’s view.

Too quickly for Kyungsoo to protest, Chanyeol ducks down and pecks Kyungsoo on the lips. Kyungsoo squawks, jerking his head back so fast he almost loses his balance. His arms pinwheel as he tries to right himself, bouquet flopping in his grasp, and Chanyeol catches him by the shoulders, laughing.

“You can’t just kiss people!” Kyungsoo shouts, punching Chanyeol hard in the stomach with his free hand. Chanyeol doubles over with a pained _oof!_ and Kyungsoo smacks him on the head with the bouquet, petals fluttering around haphazardly.

Chanyeol straightens, still clutching his stomach. There are some petals in his hair, and his face is pouty. “I just wanted to try it,” he whines. “You said people who love each other do it, so…”

Eyebrows flying up towards his hairline, Kyungsoo studies Chanyeol thoughtfully. “Well if you’re going to try kissing, you should do it right. You almost split my lip.”

Chanyeol nods earnestly, as though he doesn’t believe his luck and Kyungsoo tilts his head up. “Well come on,” he says, closing his eyes. He sounds stern, but his cheeks look a little pink. “I don’t have all day.”

Lips already puckered up, Chanyeol leans down and — Lu Han can’t make himself watch anymore. Jealousy is eating away at him, and he darts off into the trees, trying to get as far away as he can.

He’d come to accept that he was just a friend, nothing more than a sidekick to Chanyeol a lot time ago, but that doesn’t stop the prickling behind his eyes. The few tears that escape down his cheeks dry quickly in the wind as Lu Han flies toward the low-hanging cloud near the center of the island.

Lu Han doesn’t want to be here, he needs to get _away_.

Lu Han wants to leave so badly that he forgets to take a deep breath before flying into the smudge, the crushing feeling and too many missed breaths so painful that he almost drops out of the air when he comes out the other side.

With frantically beating wings, he manages to steady himself, gulping down lungfuls of air as he looks around.

The croaking of the toads is much louder at night, along with the noise of the crickets, and the lights of the town illuminate the sky with a warm glow.

Chen’s house is dark and the air cold against the bare skin of Lu Han’s chest as he flies down to the window. It’s open wider than usual, half the window swinging slightly, like it’s only recently been opened, which is kind of strange because everyone inside seems asleep.

“Help!”

Lu Han thinks he hears a small voice amid the chorus of crickets out near the stream and twists in the air, trying to hear better.

“Someone hel— “ Definitely a voice cut off by a high yelp that’s familiar to Lu Han. His heart jumps thumps in his ribcage. Chen.

Sparks exploding off of him in alarm, Lu Han dives into action. The shouts had sounded like they were coming from over by the stream and Lu Han flies over, eyes squinting in the darkness for any sign of Chen.

There’s a rustling in the tall grass on the opposite bank and the noise of a struggle.

“Get off of me, you wart-infested monster— “ Definitely Chen.

Unfortunately, Lu Han’s glow makes him a beacon in the dark, so he makes his way across the water as quietly as he can. If he’s careful, he might be able to use his light and the element of surprise to his advantage.

Peeking between the blades of grass, Lu Han can see two dim shapes, one tiny and one bloated and huge, scuffling together in the dirt.

The big one, obviously _not_ Chen, lets out a loud croak of triumph once it has Chen pinned with its lumpy body. Underneath, Chen is still struggling, letting out muffled angry grunts. Lu Han uses the distraction to burst through the grasses and throws himself at Chen’s attacker in an attempt to push him away. The sudden explosion of light startles it into inaction, giving Lu Han a clear shot, and it’s round body goes rolling from the impact.

Lu Han can see now by his own light, sparks still igniting and fizzling out frantically around him, that it’s a toad. It flails, legs and webbed toes grasping for purchase as it tries righting itself. It’s bulk is at least four times the size of either Lu Han or Chen, and Lu Han is just lucky he had enough momentum to move it at all.

Heart still beating wildly, Lu Han lowers himself until he’s kneeling on the ground next to Chen. He’s covered in dirt and gasping for breath, but otherwise unharmed, eyes wide as he stares up at Lu Han.

“What are you doing here?” he breathes, trying to wipe his hair out of his eyes and smudging some dirt across his forehead instead.

Lu Han opens his mouth to reply, forgetting again, just for a moment, but then—

“A fairy!” the toad croaks, having gotten itself upright again.

Lu Han watches as its throat swells furiously and lifts himself up into the air again, moving protectively in front of Chen.

The irises of the toads eyes are yellow, glittering with Lu Han’s sparks. It leans forward, spindly fingers shuffling the rocks around it. It picks one up, only to put it down again and take hold of another. “You won’t be stopping me,” the toad says, and Lu Han thinks that if toads had teeth, this one would have its bared. It turns the biggest stone over in its fingers menacingly. “Not when the timing is so perfect for my plan. Not now that I’ve got him in my grasp.”

Lu Han defiantly crosses his arms, because the only way the toad is getting to Chen is through him. The toad seems to realize this too, hind legs coiling up as it takes a huge leap over Lu Hans head.

“Not today, _fairy_ ,” it rasps from behind Lu Han.

Alarmed, Lu Han hears Chen yelp again. Before he can turn to fight the toad off, something hard, like a stone, hits the back of his skull and Lu Han’s vision goes black.

✴

The light shining through Lu Han’s eyelids hurts. His head is throbbing at him painfully and he hisses when he reaches toward the back of his head, the apex of the pain.

Lu Han tries to remember what happened as he works up the courage to open his eyes and face the light. He’d gotten hit in the head with something, probably a rock? And there was something huge, with beady eyes. A toad. And something small and noisy, something like—

Lu Han’s eyes pop open. _Chen._ He immediately regrets it when the dawn light sends pain zinging from his eyeballs into his brain. Lu Han curls into himself, bells ringing mournfully about his aching head as it throbs.

It’s obviously morning now, the sun just beginning to appear over the horizon. Chen and his toad kidnapper must be long gone by now. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to dull the disappointment in himself. Who knows what that toad has planned for Chen, or where it’s taken him?

“Oh dear,” a woman’s voice says from above him. For a moment, Lu Han thinks it might be Chen’s mother, who must be worried sick, but when he opens his eyes, he sees an older woman, white hair frizzy about her face and a heavy traveling cloak hanging from her shoulders.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says, looking down at where Lu Han is curled up in the grass. Instead of being upset with him, she sounds curious, almost amused. “This isn’t your story. How did you get here?” She looks around at the stream and the forest beyond and mutters, “That magic rain must have been stronger than I thought.”

Lu Han chimes anxiously up at her, wishing he could explain about the smudge.

“It must be hard not being able to speak, a bright little pixie like you,” she observes shrewdly. Despite the pain in his head, Lu Han is pleased not to be called a fairy again, and lets out a jingle of assent.

“A pixie is what happens when a wish made on a falling star comes true, you know. A fulfilled wish carries a lot of magic,” she says. “I’m a witch, so I know a thing or two about magic, and you carry a lot of magic in you too.”

Lu Han sighs and waves at sparks that surround him derisively. Sparkles like this are hardly great magic. They definitely didn’t stop him from getting knocked out.

The witch smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that makes her weathered face look almost pretty. “Magic of the heart. That’s what you give people that helps them fly.”

He’s never thought of it like that, associating flight more with Chanyeol’s saying of _faith, trust, and pixie dust!_. The starry-eye look people got after their first sprinkle of pixie dust suddenly makes sense.

“Of course, it won’t work like that here, not without your island’s magic to help. The fairies are in charge around here and a facefull of pixie dust will just make people a bit dazed, at most.” Lowering a hand, she opens her palm for Lu Han to crawl onto. Once he’s clambered on, she lifts him up to eye level and looks Lu Han over. “You earned those wings, didn’t you?” Lu Han nods, fluttering them self-consciously against his back. “It must have been a very selfless deed you did to get such a lovely pair.”

Lu Han isn’t sure about selfless. The way he’d earned his wings was practically an accident, but they’re a part of him now, one he can’t imagine life without.

“What would you say, little pixie,” the witch says, “if I told you I could give you a voice?”

Lu Han’s breath catches as what she’s said sinks in and his heart leaps. All the words he’s never had a chance to say coiled up in that lump in his throat. Things he’s never been able to tell Chanyeol, things he would give _anything_ to say aloud.

Lu Han looks up at her, his heart probably clear in his eyes.

With a nod, she says, “All right, then."

The witch begins searching through the folds in her coat with her empty hand and pulls out a tiny bottle. It’s small enough for Lu Han to hold, like she’d been planning on running into him all along. She gives it to him, and at his questioning look, explains, “Drink it. It’s a tonic of dandelions and parrot's blood and the chirping of crickets and such things. That’ll do the trick." Lu Han opens the bottle. The liquid inside is blue, almost neon. “Just remember, magic like this comes at a cost.”

Lu Han can’t think of any cost he wouldn’t be willing to pay in exchange for the chance to have a voice. He’s sure.

He tips the tonic back, letting the liquid slide down his throat. It’s too viscous for him to be able to breath as it oozes down his throat, completely tasteless. His throat burns as he swallows, like fire or a thousand knives gouging into flesh, and once it's all swallowed, he gasps in a breath, coughing so hard his stomach hurts.

“The effect of the tonic will become permanent in three day’s time, which is when I will take full possession of my payment.” She’s smiling again, but instead of thinking she might be pretty, Lu Han suddenly thinks there’s something terrible in the look, a smugness that sends a chill up his spine. “I think I’ll take that pair of wings, “ she says. “They should cover the cost of a voice well enough.”

Lu Han tries to let out an angry clamor of bells, a raspy “ _what?_ ” coming out of his mouth instead. His hands clutch at his throat. The pain is still there, tearing through him as the air scrapes up and down his throat with each breath.

The agony of the tonic plus the still lingering pain at the back of his skull leaves him incapacitated, and Lu Han’s mind is reeling.

It worked. He can _talk_.

The witch tuts at him. “I told you there would be a cost. You’re able to speak, which is what you’ve always wanted, and if you’re lucky, you haven’t had the wings for too long and you’ll still be able to fly.”

Lu Han has had his wings for so long that back in Never Land, a place where time never truly passes, it seems like forever. His heart sinks with despair.

She sets him back down on the grass, wiping her hands on her skirt.

“I’d better be off before there’s too much daylight,” the witch says. “The spinster in the house beyond owes me a debt for giving her a son, but magic is feared in these parts.”

Lu Han curls up around himself tightly, shoulders shuddering from the ache in his throat and stomach. How could he be so stupid? What else would a witch possibly want from him besides the magic of his wings?

“Cheer up now, little pixie. There’s more wings where these came from.” The witch seems to think about something, weighing the options seriously before adding, “The toad probably took your friend to his home in the swamp. You have enough time to get there with the wings you have now. Perhaps saving him would be selfless enough to earn another pair.”

Lu Han doesn’t move, in too much pain and too devastated to watch the witch as she makes her way through the tall grasses and disappears.

✴

The swamp the witch mentioned is up the stream. Once Lu Han manages to gather himself, it doesn’t take more than a few hours for him to fly along the edge of the water. The trees thicken on either side, blocking out the sunlight until it’s dim enough for Lu Han to stop squinting through his headache.

His throat still feels scorched, each swallow raw as it goes down. Lu Han’s tried to hum a few things as he flies, songs he’s heard Chen sing, and no bell sounds had come out, only the normal sound of a human voice.

Lu Han feels all tangled up inside, the elation at finally having something he’s always wished for buoying him up while the misery of what he had traded weighs him down. He’s so wrapped up in everything, feeling every beat of his wings and wondering how many he has left, that he barely watches where he’s flying.

Gradually the smell of the air begins to change to something staler, more humid than the seaside breezes. In front of Lu Han, the flow of the river slows as the water spreads out between the trees in swampy pools. There’s the scent of rotting wood just on the edge of Lu Han’s nose, more pungent than anything he’s ever smelled in Never Land, and he knows he’s found the swamp.

The light filters down through the trees overhead, muting all the colors to yellows, browns and greens, and making all the edges look fuzzy. There’s a stillness about this swamp that Lu Han finds unsettling, flying from tree to tree and looking down at the murky water anxiously. He hopes Chen is somewhere dry and not stuck in the mud.

It’s easy to hear a racket being made up by one of the few solid-looking banks, someone’s loud voice cutting through the heavy silence of the swamp. Lu Han flies toward the noise, remembering the night before by the stream. He would probably recognize Chen’s voice anywhere.

Sure enough, there’s the big body of the toad, skin a molted green in daylight, on the muddy bank. Lu Han can hear Chen from where he must be hidden behind a rock outcropping. Beyond the muddy bank is a grouping of trees, their tangle of roots and a couple more rocks like a wall behind where Chen and the toad are. Lu Han circles around so that he can peek around the trunk of one of the trees and remain out of sight.

“Look,” Chen is saying from where he’s seated on the ground, “I’m not going to be your— your _bride_ or whatever you want from me.” His hands are tied behind his back with some rushes— his ankles as well, Lu Han sees as Chen shifts uncomfortably. “Human-toad marriages definitely aren’t legal, even if I am just a miniature one, and there’s no way I’m going to be kissing your warty face, so you can just forget it.” Lu Han can imagine the grimace on Chen’s face clearly when he says, “Lets face it: you’re no frog prince.”

“Soon I’ll be much more than a frog prince,” the toad says with a low croak. Its beady yellow eyes are more frightening in the daylight. “You’re going to help me become a toad king. I’ll no longer repulse people because I’ll be able to make everyone love me.”

“You’re crazy,” Chen says.

The toad hops to the edge of the bank, turning its back on Chen, and Chen takes the opportunity to begin struggling against his bonds in earnest.

“I know I seem like I would make the perfect housewife, but I already said I won’t marry you.” Chen flops onto his stomach accidentally as he struggles, and ends up with a mouthful of dirt that he has to spit out before continuing. “And I seriously doubt you could get a priest out in this swamp, so you might as well give this dream of yours up.”

The toad’s throat swells again, and it lets out a loud croak as it launches itself in the water, swimming away into the swamp.

“You better not bring back any flies for me to eat or something!” Chen shouts after it.

Lu Han waits until the ripples left by the toad have disappeared before flying out from behind the trees to go help Chen.

“You again? What happened to you last night?” Chen asks when he catches sight of Lu Han, but the blase effect is ruined by his mud-smeared face and the relieved slump of his shoulders.

Lu Han shrugs, not wanting to go into detail about how he almost got brained by a toad, and begins tugging at the knots, trying to free Chen. After all Chen’s efforts, the rushes tying his wrists come free fairly easily, and Chen rubs at the marks gratefully as Lu Han moves on to the ones around his ankles.

These are much tighter, Lu Han’s fingertips beginning to hurt as he tries to untangle the grass. “He had to tie my feet after I tried to kick him in the air sack,” Chen says, sounding a tiny bit smug. “I don’t even know how he managed to knot it with his toady fingers but it’s way too tight. I can’t feel my feet.”

At last, Lu Han manages to undo the last loop, the rushes falling away. Chen sighs with relief, reaching down to rub at his ankles.

“It was nice of you to come save me. Sir Romeo has really tried his best to sweep me off my feet, but I think I’m going to pass.” He hisses. “Uh, pins and needles.”

“That’s too bad,” a low croak comes from behind Lu Han, making both he and Chen jump and the air is littered with sparks. The toad crawls back up onto the bank, eyeing Lu Han. “You’re not a fairy. You’re a _pixie_ , aren’t you?” The toad says “pixie” like the idea is particularly disgusting, and Lu Han, who would ordinarily be glad to be recognized for what he is, is offended.

“Yeah, he really hates being called a fairy, actually,” Chen says as Lu Han puffs himself up angrily.

Because of their size difference, Lu Han really isn’t a match for the toad in a face off like this. Lu Han thinks of what the witch said about his pixie dust. It might only gain he and Chen a few seconds head start, but that’s better than nothing.

Quickly formulating a plan, he tugs Chen up on his feet by the hand, letting go as he stumbles back against the rock for support. Then he lifts himself straight up in the air, high enough that he passes some of the trees’ branches, before dive-bombing back down, heading straight for the toad.

The toad, probably thinking Lu Han is on a collision course like the night before, swells so that it’s bigger, glittering eyes watching Lu Han challengingly. Just before impact, Lu Han pushes out his arms, releasing the biggest cloud of sparks he’s ever managed, and while he veers off-course, the sparks hit the toad right in the face.

It lets out several agonized croaks, but Lu Han is already back at Chen’s side, trying to help him climb the maze of tree roots so they can get to the other side of the swampy island.

Chen’s legs wobble unsteadily. “My feet are still kind of asleep,” he whines as Lu Han uses his wings to tug Chen up the hard parts. Below, the toad is still reeling from the pixie dust attack. He’s watching them climb, hoping dizzily toward the bottom of the tree roots.

When they finally reach the top, the toad has begun to hop up behind them, and from where he’s perched on the point of a rock, Chen looks over the edge.

There’s no way down, only a sharp drop to a fuzzy patch of ground. Chen groans. “This gives an unexpectedly literal meaning to being stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

Lu Han stares at the fuzzy patch. It’s a slightly different shade of brown than the ground around it, messier and less muddy, like it’s been rubbed dry. It looks kind of… smudgy.

The toad is almost on them, just a few jumps from the top of the roots, and Lu Han grabs Chen’s hand, tugging at his arm.

“No way,” Chen says, shaking his head frantically. “I will not become a Chen pancake just because you can fly and I can’t.”

Lu Han tugs harder, making Chen let out a screech as he teeters on the edge of the rock, and the toad hops up behind Chen with murder in its eyes.

“ _Jump!_ ” Lu Han yells, giving Chen’s arm one last herculean pull.

Just in time, Chen tips over edge. Still gripping his hand, Lu Han relaxes his wings, and lets them both fall right into the ground.

✴

For a moment, Lu Han almost thinks the crushing feeling is from crashing into the dirt, but then the color drains away, everything gray and suffocating. There’s too many missed breaths and Lu Han’s heart beating at his ribs, Chen’s hand clutched in his own—

And then they land hard on some ground that is definitely no longer part of a swamp.

Lu Han sits up, rubbing at the sore spot on the back of his head that’s started throbbing again, probably from their trip through the smudge. He looks around at the forest they’ve ended up in, a much brighter and happier place than the swamp, and listens to Chen sputter beside him.

“Where are we?” he wheezes. Then he looks down at their joined hands. “Did you just try to kill me by throwing me off a cliff??”

Lu Han shrugs and lets go of Chen’s hand, because the answer to that is both sort of, and also not at all.

“Wait,” Chen freezes in the middle of pushing himself to his feet, eyes going wide. “You can _talk?_ ”

Lu Han wondered how Chen was going to take it. “I guess?”

They’re both standing up and looking around, Chen’s mouth opening and closing as he tries to think of what to say, when a dark shape pops into existence beside them. The toad looks just as surprised to see them as they are to see it. It’s throat pouch pulses dangerously. Chen and Lu Han look at each other, and then back at the toad, who is watching them with beady eyes. After a few seconds, it lets out a loud croak, and though that was a signal, Lu Han and Chen bolt off running into the woods as fast as they can.

Lu Han could probably get away faster if he flew, but that would mean leaving Chen behind. They both stumble over the grass as it tangles around their ankles, Chen’s trousers flapping around his calves and making him grunt in annoyance .

“This is so unfair,” Chen whines as they swerve around a huge clump of thorny bushes. “Can’t you just use your wings carry me?”

Lu Han chances a look over his shoulder, beyond the faint trail of sparks that flare and go out in his wake. The toad is definitely following them, but its hops are slow enough that it must still be in a daze from the faceful of pixie dust he’d gotten on the other side of the smudge.

“Too heavy,” Lu Han says, throat burning from running and from the residual effects of the voice tonic. He whips his head back around just in time to avoid colliding with a large rock and uses his wings to get enough height to jump over it.

“I’m not that heavy!” Chen says as Lu Han’s feet find the grass again. “And could you talk the whole time or— “

Behind them, the toad lets out a croak that’s loud enough to echo around the forest. It startles Chen so much that he stumbles, Lu Han only just catching his hand and keeping him from falling flat on his face.

“I’ll explain later,” Lu Han pants, dragging Chen along, “Just— run!”

Chen groans, but he steadies himself so that he’s no longer being pulled, their clasped hands swinging loosely between them as they run.

Up ahead, there’s another clump of bushes, the brambles tangled in a maze of thorns and red berries, hidden among the leaves. Lu Han tugs at Chen, pointing to small gap in the thorns, just wide enough for them to sneak through and hide.

Chen ducks through first, a couple of the thorns grabbing hold of his shirt and tearing it. Shuddering, Lu Han pulls his wings as close to his body as he can manage as he slips through the gap. He ends up nicking his arm and back instead, the pain stinging as he and Chen scoot as far back into the darkness of the bushes as they can manage.

Inside the brambles, the foliage is thick enough to block out most of the light, keeping them hidden. Lu Han’s heart rate still skyrockets when he sees the toad hop around a tree, hot on their trail. When it comes even with the bush, Lu Han shrinks back into Chen, trying to hide his natural glow, not daring to breathe until the toad’s molted green body is out of sight.

He and Chen stay huddled in the bushes for a long time, just to be sure the toad is gone. Chen’s panting becomes more and more relieved as it whooshes past Lu Han’s neck and Lu Han eventually lets himself go limp, completely and utterly exhausted.

✴

The air of this forest is warm, with a savory smell, like when hot sun shines down on ripe grass. Lu Han breathes it in deeply when he and Chen finally climb out of their hiding place, stretching out the tightness in his limbs and looking around at the muted yellow light that seems to illuminate everything.

“That was a close one,” Chen says. “Where are we?”

Lu Han shakes his head, because the smudge could have taken them anywhere, and he’s definitely never seen this place before.

“It’s probably better if we get out of this forest.” Chen cranes his neck, looking around for any trace of the toad. “You should put those wings to good use and figure out which way will get us out of these trees.”

He points up at the canopy of leaves, and Lu Han nods, lifting off the ground and heading towards the tops of the trees. The cut on his arm from the thorn stings as he pushes through the leaves, and he blinks when he makes it through, almost blinded by the undiluted sunlight.

Where he and Chen came from, there’s nothing but trees, the leafy tops swaying in the wind, but ahead of them, the forest only extends a bit further before it trails off into flat fields.

“Not much further that way,” Lu Han says when he lands again, pointing.

Chen nods, scrubbing at a patch of the swamp mud that’s caked on his cheek. He’s not making much headway and Lu Han reaches over to help, rubbing with his thumb until the spot is gone. When Chen catches his eye, he looks curious.

“So…your voice?”

Lu Han takes his hand back, rubbing his thumb clean on the cloth fastened around his waist. “It’s new,” he says, still not used to how he sounds speaking aloud. “I met a witch when I was coming to find you, and she gave it to me.”

Chen is surprisingly quiet as they start walking toward the edge of the forest, face thoughtful. Now that they’re not trying to run through it, the grass is pleasantly soft under Lu Han’s feet, the ground almost springy.

After a long time, Chen asks, “What’d you trade for it?”

They’ve been making their way up a small incline for awhile now, and Lu Han is panting some with the effort. “Huh?”

“Everyone knows witches don’t just give magic away for nothing. So what did you give her?”

Lu Han’s stomach clenches as he thinks of what had happened behind Chen’s house the night before, of how stupid he’d been. He opens his mouth, not quite sure how to tell Chen without getting more upset with himself.

Quite suddenly, they reach the crest of the hill and the end of the trees. Beyond, theres a well-kept farmhouse nestled behind a windbreak of pine trees and the farmland Lu Han had seen extending down a slight slope, giving them a good view of the plain.

In the vegetable garden of the farmhouse, among the pumpkin vines and tomato plants, there is a huge green trunk that extends up, up, up all the way until it disappears into the clouds.

They both slow to a stop, staring at it, and Chen asks, “You see that too, right?”

Lu Han nods slowly, tipping his head back all the way to follow the stalk up with his eyes. It’s huge, larger around than four of the forest trees put together, a dark, earthy green with a waxy finish that catches the sunlight as it filters down through the blanket of clouds.

As they make their way closer to the garden, the door of the farmhouse opens and a man walks outside. He’s very tall, the patchy stubble on his chin indicating he’s somewhere between a boy and an adult. Taking in a deep breath like Lu Han had earlier, he sweeps his eyes over the edge of the forest with the eye of someone who knows every inch of the land he’s surveying and catches sight of Lu Han and Chen immediately.

“Hey there,” he says, taking only a few long-legged steps to reach where they are. He crouches down to get a better look, the buckles of his overalls clinking. “Where did you guys come from?”

The man’s voice isn’t as deep as Chanyeol, who is the only other big male Lu Han knows, but he has the same kind eyes that crinkle at the corners when he smiles, and Lu Han relaxes at the familiarity.

Chen gestures to his muddy and torn clothes, and the scrapes on Lu Han’s arm. “I know we must look like dirty vagabonds, but we just had a nasty run-in with a swamp and a bramble bush.”

“A swamp?” The man blinks. “There aren’t any of those around here.”

“It’s a long story,” Chen says, waving a dismissive hand. “Anyway, the point is we’re not dangerous.”

The man snorts. “You’re like the size of my thumb. I wasn’t really worried.”

“Well, we _could_ have been dangerous,” Chen pouts. “Maybe.”

“I’m glad you’re not.” He extends an absolutely enormous hand with one finger stuck out for them to shake. “I’m Yifan, and that over there is my family’s farm.”

“I’m Chen and this is— “ Chen looks over at Lu Han with suddenly wide eyes, and Lu Han takes pity on him.

He uses both hands to shake Yifan’s finger. “Lu Han. My name is Lu Han.”

Chen looks embarrassed that he’s only just learned Lu Han’s name, and he clears his throat and changes the subject.

“What kind of plant is that?” he asks, pointing at the huge stalk in the middle of the farmhouse garden.

Yifan looks over his shoulder. “Oh that. I can show you, if you like?”

“You’ll have to carry me,” Chen says, jerking his head in Lu Han’s direction. “Lucky Lu Han here can fly, but I’m stuck on two feet.”

Yifan carefully deposits Chen on his shoulder, Lu Han hovering in the air nearby. Up close, the stalk seems more immense, winding a little like a corkscrew, with shoots of leaves and baby stalks curled in tight tendrils every so often along it, almost like steps in a ladder.

Yifan looks up at the huge green stalk and scratches his head. “The other day, was taking one of our horses into town. We’re a little tight on money and I hoped I could sell him for enough to lighten the load. On the way, I met an old woman, a witch, who offered me a handful of magic beans for it instead and I…” Yifan looks over at Lu Han, expression almost bashful, as though he’s embarrassed by what he’s about to say. “People say a giant lives up above clouds with a goose that lays golden eggs, and the only way up there is to plant a magic bean in the ground.” He laughs self-deprecatingly. “I’d hoped it would grow into a big ladder or something, so I guess I sort of got my wish.”

Chen leans forward to get a better look at the stalk and then looks at the side of Yifan’s face skeptically. “You’re the biggest person I’ve ever seen. I refuse to believe there is someone _you_ could call a giant.”

“It’s just a story,” Yifan says.

“But you believed in it enough to plant the magic beans,” Lu Han says, still looking at the way the stalk disappears when it reaches the low-hanging blanket of clouds. It’s a long way up, but Yifan could probably make the climb if he tried.

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

There’s a loud rustling near the edge of the garden, the tops of the tomato plans shuddering ominously.

“A toad?” Yifan says, baffled, when he catches a glimpse of it through the plants. “We don’t have any toads around here either.”

“Seriously?” Chen practically shouts, stomping a bare foot on Yifan’s shoulder.

“A friend of yours?”

“Believe me, it’s not.”

“Run,” Lu Han says urgently as the rustles get closer, sparks bursting from him anxiously.

Chen shakes his head. “It’ll just follow us, we have to— “ His head whips around, staring at the giant green beanstalk. “Climb!”

“What?” Yifan shouts, the toad croaking angrily as it hops closer.

“Up!!” Chen shouts, poking Yifan’s neck insistently. “Go up!”

Grasping at the nearest handhold, Yifan steps up onto the first coil. “Why are we running from a toad?” he asks, grunting as he pulls himself up while his biceps flex under the sleeves of his shirt from the effort.

“He’s just, uh, kind of obsessed with marrying me as a bid for power. I think.”

“ _Marrying_ you?” Yifan sputters, almost missing the next handhold.

Lu Han flies a little higher, and looks back down just in time to see the toad take a giant leap onto the first coil of the beanstalk.

“Seriously??” Chen shouts in frustration from where he’s peering over Yifan’s shoulder at the toad, holding on to the strap of Yifan’s overall for safety. “It’s a long story, just _go!_ ”

The beanstalk really is a lot like a ladder, the twisting of it’s trunk and regular shoots of leaves making it much easier for Yifan to climb. By the time they’re high enough that the roof of the farmhouse looks like a small stepping stone between the forest and the patchwork of fields, Yifan is having to stop every so often to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

“Okay,” Chen says, finally righting himself on Yifan’s shoulder. “I think he’s gone but he’s green, this thing is green. There’s a lot of green here, so who knows. We thought we lost him before, but he’s one crafty toad.”

Yifan pauses, turning so he can lean his back against the trunk of the stalk while his feet rest firmly on one of the wider shoots of leaves. “We’re about halfway up, so I guess we might as well keep going. I’m not going to want to climb this thing again if we go back down.” He attempts to dry his hands on the legs of his overalls. “So that toad’s been following you?”

Chen launches into the story of his kidnapping, and Lu Han lands lightly on one of the tendrils near Yifan’s head, giving his wings a break while Yifan rests. The big heart-shaped leaves of the beanstalk wave lazily in the breeze as Chen talks about their escape from the toad in the swamp and how they’d fallen right through the ground, into the forest behind Yifan’s house.

Yifan takes it all in quietly before beginning to climb again. “So you were magically transported here from somewhere else?”

Chen taps his chin thoughtfully. “Uh, you could say that. I live in a town near the ocean.”

“And you?” Yifan glances up at where Lu Han is flying, just above his head.

Chen looks just as curious as Yifan, and Lu Han swallows. Talking to people about himself is more difficult than he’d ever imagined. “An island. I live on an island called Never Land.”

“I’ve lived on our farm my whole life. It’s been in my family for generations, but ever since my father died and my mother’s been sick, the debts have just been adding up faster than I can pay them off.” Yifan chances a glance down at the roof of his house, a little black paver in on the edge of the fields. “A solid gold egg would be more than enough to pay off all our debts.”

Yifan doesn’t seem the type to steal, but Lu Hun can understand someone not wanting to lose their home.

The beanstalk ends just above the blanket of clouds, leaves petering off as its trunk gets thinner and thinner, before it curls in on itself, just another tendril.

Yifan steps off the last foothold hesitantly, first testing the layer of clouds with just the tip of his boot before he stands on it with both feet. He lets out the breath he’d been holding when he doesn’t fall through, Chen craning his neck to get a better look while Lu Han floats nearby, taking in the scenery.

The clouds stretch out in all directions, like a field of grass covered in a thick layer of snow and a ways off, there’s a cottage built of stone. Beside it is a huge waterwheel turning slowly, pushed along by a stream of swiftly moving clouds, waterfalls of white fluff falling from partition to partition, and a fenced in barnyard.

The cottage truly huge, several times larger than Yifan’s own farmhouse or Chen’s home or any other house Lu Han has ever seen. It’s closer to the size of Hook’s pirate ship back in Never Land.

Chen says to Yifan faintly, “I believe you about the giant now.”

As Yifan walks closer to the cottage, Lu Han can see something wandering around inside the paddock, its white body almost indistinguishable from the bed of clouds underneath it.

Other than being oversized, the goose seems normal, feathers blending with the clouds around it. Then it moves, head swiveling around atop its long neck and it’s beak flashes in the sunlight. Several of the longer feathers on it’s wings glimmer at their tips.

Chen gapes. “Is that goose’s beak made out of _gold?_ ”

“The Golden Goose,” Yifan breathes. “It’s real.”

“So what are we thinking? Jail-breaking the goose?”

“I wonder where the giant is.” They all look around warily, but there’s nothing else around besides the cottage, the rolling clouds like hills in the distance.

Lu Han flies over to the window of the cottage as stealthily as possible to get a look through the window. Through the glass, the inside is a bit wibbly, but he can make out the huge shape of a man, the bottom half of his face covered with a beard. He’s reclined in a chair and the sound of his snores makes the windowpanes rattle with every inhale and exhale.

“He’s asleep,” Lu Han assures the other two back at the paddock.

Yifan is frowning up at the gate’s handle, which is more than twice his height. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to open that.”

“Oh!” Chen exclaims, “I can do that! I can open a huge door.”

“I’m sure Lu Han could just— ” Chen shakes his head, reaching out to grab ahold of the fence. Yifan looks on dubiously as Chen shimmies up the wooden post closest to the latch. “Uh, okay?”

“These stupid frilly sleeves,” Chen growls in frustration as he climbs. The fancy cuffs Chen’s mother attached to his shirt keep flopping over his hands, and when he reaches the top of the fence, Chen yanks at them each in turn, the seams tearing apart loudly as the frills come off. “Much better.”

The gate’s latch is made of lacquered black metal, a huge metal handle with a lever for the thumb holding it closed. Chen studies it, hands on his hips. “It looks kind of heavy…” he says, beginning to scoot within arms reach of the latch.

Lu Han flies up next to him. “I can help, if you want.”

The thumb lever is big enough that when Chen puts both his feet on it, his weight doesn’t even make it budge. He jumps, stomping his feet, but it only makes the metal of the latch jiggle and click against itself noisily.

Chen sighs in frustration and says to Lu Han, “Maybe if both of us stand on it?”

Lu Han nods, using his wings to lower himself so only the tips of his toes rest on the thumb lever at first. There’s really only enough room for them to stand flush with each other, their chests brushing. Chen’s brings his hands up to grip Lu Han’s shoulders, steadying him, and grins.

“I hope you’re planning on making an honest woman of me after this,” he says, eyes dancing with mirth. Lu Han can feel Chen’s breath on his cheeks, can see the way the corners of his mouth curl up up close for the first time.

Quite suddenly, Lu Han remembers that when he’d seen Chanyeol and Kyungsoo standing this close, they’d been about to kiss. His ears burn with embarrassment.

“You’ve already caused me enough trouble,” he mutters, lightly gripping Chen’s waist to keep from falling backwards. “Besides, you’re betrothed to the toad.”

There’s just enough time for Lu Han to catch the look on Chen’s face, mouth falling open in preparation to laugh at Lu Han’s joke, before he lets his full weight sink onto the thumb lever and the latch clicks open.

With their combined weight, the thumb lever slopes down as the gate unlocks, throwing them both off balance. Lu Han tries to use his wings to keep from toppling backwards, and only Lu Han’s grip on Chen’s waist keeps him from bowling them both over as he falls forward.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard Lu Han beats his wings, Chen is too heavy for him to carry and stay afloat. Together they tumble, the cloudy floor rushing up to meet them.

“I’ve got you!” Yifan yells. Foamy bits of cloud fly up around his body as he dives forward, managing to break their fall with his mammoth hands. A small mushroom cloud of Lu Han’s sparks goes up around them, mixing with the bits of cloud debris.

“I don’t think it would have hurt that much,” Chen says, as he and Lu Han untangle themselves. “The ground _is_ made of clouds.”

“You’re welcome,” Yifan says sarcastically as he stands up, placing Chen back on his shoulder and brushing the bits of cloud off his overalls. Lu Han stands on the layer of clouds, shaking his head to clear it of the leftover sparks before taking off again.

Chen frowns at Yifan’s tone. “I’m just saying that— “

The rest of Chen’s sentence is drowned out by a honk and a loud hiss that comes from inside the paddock.

“Right,” Yifan says, staring through open gate at the goose with wide eyes. “So now we just have to get back down the beanstalk with the… giant… goose.”

“You really didn’t think this through, did you?” Chen says, and Lu Han kind of agrees.

“Well, I was _planning_ on coming up here with some tools and stuff— “

The goose hisses again, showing the row of tiny, sharp teeth on the inside of its beak, cutting their bickering short as it studies them with its beady gold eyes.

Eventually, Lu Han and Yifan manage to corral the goose in a path back toward the beanstalk, Lu Han using his pixie dust, and Yifan waving his arms like a windmill.

Chen watches from the front pocket of Yifan’s overalls. “I can’t believe we’re herding a giant goose right now,” he says. “These are the kinds of things people don’t believe when you tell them afterwards.”

“ _You’re_ herding?” Yifan pants, flinching away from the goose as it snaps at him and hisses angrily when it misses. It’s almost the same height as Yifan and keeps trying to bite his face.

If possible, the goose seems less enthusiastic about trying to go down the beanstalk than it was about making it’s way away from the paddock.

“Maybe it’ll just fly down?” Chen muses as the goose angrily flaps its wings when Yifan and Lu Han try to guide it to the leafy top of the stalk.

“Maybe— “ Yifan starts to say, when the goose lets out an alarmed honk that echoes over the layer of clouds.

Flapping and hissing fiercely, the goose plows past them, heading back the way they came. In its place is a shining, golden egg that the goose must have laid out of shock, and the dark green body of one very familiar toad.

“This is getting ridiculous!” Chen shouts, waving his arms in frustration. “You’ve got to stop following me. How did you even get up here? You’re a _toad_.”

The toad is holding something long and white in between its webbed fingers. One of the goose’s feathers, tipped in gold. The goose must have been startled enough to run off after the toad plucked it.

Back near the paddock again, the goose is still honking histrionically and from inside the cottage, Lu Han hear something rumbling. All of them blanche, looking back toward the sound.

“You woke the giant up? That’s just _great_ , toad,” Chen snaps, as they turn back around, but the toad is nowhere to be seen.

The angry noises from the cottage are getting progressively louder, the floor of clouds beginning to tremble from heavy footsteps.

“I think,” Yifan says, leaning down to scoop up the golden egg, “it’s time for us to make our escape.”

The climb back down the beanstalk seems faster than the one up. Lu Han wonders if it’s because this time there might be a giant following them. However, there’s still no sign of the giant when they reach the garden again, and Yifan tilts his head back to look up the stalk pensively. “Hopefully he’s realized his goose is still safe and won’t come down here, but I should probably chop this thing down.”

There’s no trace of the toad on the ground either when Lu Han does a quick aerial survey of the garden. The surrounding fields are thick with plants ready to harvest, with plenty of places for the toad to hide, so Lu Han gives it up as a lost cause.

“These smudgy spots you talked about,” Yifan says when he takes them into his kitchen to give them some food. He passes them each small bits of bread and cheese, and makes slices of apple thin enough to fit in their hands, like slices of watermelon. “I think I saw one when I was feeding the livestock this morning, if you wanted me to show you?”

The place on the wall of the barn is definitely a smudge, the red paint muddied and diluted, and Yifan sets Chen back on the ground so that he and Lu Han can go through it.

“Before you go, this is a thank you,” he says, digging deep into one of his pockets and holding something out. A bean.

Chen takes it with a cupped palm as Lu Han asks, “One of the magic ones?”

“My mom always tells me not to put all my eggs in one basket, and well,” Yifan pats his other pocket, where the golden egg is stowed, “I got what I needed because of you two. Maybe that bean can help you find your way home.”

“You know,” Chen says, stuffing the bean into his pants pocket so he can take Lu Han’s hand. His other hand is holding the bundle of food Yifan had wrapped up for them, just in case. “For a regular-sized person, you’re alright, Yifan.”

The sun is beginning its descent, the light taking on a late-afternoon glow, and Yifan smiles wide enough that his gums show. “You take care, Chen, Lu Han. Watch out for that toad.”

Lu Han is more prepared for the jump than last time, taking a deep breath as he waves goodbye to Yifan and Chen’s hand still hold tight to his as Yifan’s farm disappears, all the color fading to gray.

✴

“It’s going to be dark soon,” Lu Han says. “That’s probably not a good idea.”

The forest that the smudge had put them in is very different from the one behind Yifan’s house. The trees have bark so dark it’s almost black, and spindly, claw-like branches that cast ominous shadows over the clearing where he and Chen found the huge puddle of rain water. Though it’s not cold out, there’s a faint screen of mist floating between the trees. The whole atmosphere of the place is making Lu Han uneasy.

Chen rolls his eyes, dipping his toes into the puddle to check the temperature. “I’m so grimy I can hardly find my skin under all this dirt. I have to clean myself.” He strips off his tattered shirt, sticking his fingers through the tears from the thorns of the bramble bush and frowning. “You should get in here too. Those cuts of yours need to be cleaned.”

The skin Chen’s shirt had covered is much cleaner than the rest of him. Lu Han watches the movement of his shoulder blades cast shadows over the rest of Chen’s back as the last of the daylight filters through the trees. There’s a spot on Chen’s right shoulder, a little darker than the rest of his skin, that’s almost shaped like a star.

Chen reaches for the waist of his pants and Lu Han looks down at the scrape on his arm quickly. It’s right on the top of his forearm, an angry red against the golden glow of his skin. It’s already scabbed over, but it probably should still be cleaned.

There’s a whoop, and Lu Han looks up just in time to see a fully nude Chen running full-tilt into the puddle with a splash.

“Come onnnn,” Chen whines, once he’s out deep enough to paddle himself around. “The water’s really nice.”

Walking toward the edge of the puddle, Lu Han watches Chen dip his head under the water, trying to clean some of the dried mud out of his hair.

He sighs out a couple sparks when Chen comes up for air, splashing playfully, and reaches down to undo the cloth around his waist.

The water isn’t as cold as Lu Han thought, and it’s a relief after all the running around they’ve been doing. He rolls his shoulders, stretching out the muscles there as Chen swims in circles around him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Chen says. “For someone who just got a voice for the first time, you’re awfully quiet. I feel like I hardly know anything about you.”

Lu Han runs his fingers over the surface of the water, making tiny ripples on the glassy surface. He has the power to speak now, but it’s difficult to remember that he can voice his thoughts aloud. “I’ve never had anybody that wanted to hear what I had to say before you.”

“Their loss.” Chen flops back into the water, floating on his back and staring up at the open patch of sky above the meadow.

Lu Han bites his lip, teetering on the edge of something. “I traded my wings,” he says, before he can change his mind.

Chen raises his head up to look at Lu Han in surprise. “What?”

“You asked what my voice cost me, and that’s what the witch took.” Lu Han moves his wings against the water, feeling the weight of them on his back. “I earned them, so there was enough magic for a trade. I’m supposed to lose them in a few days.”

“That’s…wow.” Chen lets his head fall back into the water, drifting aimlessly as Lu Han swishes his hands through the water. “You earned them?”

It’s surprisingly easy to tell Chen about how he’d gotten his wings by saving Chanyeol from being drowned by a mermaid. Chen’s curiosity keeps him talking about his past, about Never Land, Chanyeol, and Kyungsoo, and why he’d run off that night.

“So this on this island, Never Land, no one ever grows up?” Chen hops as he pulls his underpants up one leg and then the other, and Lu Han averts his eyes, picking up his cloth from the ground.

“Chanyeol’s always been a kid, always the same.” They spent so long in the water that Lu Hans fingers have wrinkled, slipping as he tries to refasten the fabric.

“Kyungsoo’s not the first person Chanyeol’s brought to the island,” Lu Han says, remembering Jinri looking around curiously at all the boys of the island, blue nightdress billowing around her ankles. “There’s was a girl once, but she left and Chanyeol was… sad.” As sad as Chanyeol ever is, anyway, wandering listlessly about the island and refusing company for a few days. “Eventually, he forgot her. Nothing changes in Never Land. Chanyeol never wants to grow up, so he forgets things. But I can’t do that.”

Lu Han has so many memories of Chanyeol, their life and adventures together, but in the end, they’ve all been discarded so Chanyeol can keep the naive mind of a child. Lu Han isn’t sure how he could stay in Never Land much longer when Chanyeol has forgotten every moment that drew them together.

There are whole lifetimes between he and Chanyeol that Lu Han is the sole keeper of, and Lu Han’s heart is so tired.

He shakes his arms a little to help them air dry and hisses when he jars the scrape on his forearm, softened and tender from soaking in the water.

“You should bandage that up.” Chen grabs a handful of the ruffled collar of his shirt and tears it off, the sound of splitting fabric loud in the dusky clearing. Holding the strip of cloth up, he asks, “Want me to do it?”

“Sure.”

Lu Han sits cross-legged on the grass, holding out his injured arm, and Chen kneels beside him. “It’s lucky you glow so I can see what I’m doing,” he says, looping the makeshift bandage around Lu Han’s arm. Chen’s eyes flick up to Lu Han’s face quickly, and then back down again. “This Chanyeol… you like him, don’t you?”

Lu Han’s breath hitches. He’s never heard how he feels about Chanyeol out loud before, and that twisting in his chest, a sharp wound between the ribs, begins to ache again.

Chen nods, probably at the look on Lu Han’s face. “I can tell from the way you talk about him.”

His fingers are still damp from their swim, dragging against Lu Han’s skin, and his wet hair is dripping into his eyes. He pushes it back carelessly, giving Lu Han a better view of his intense concentration as he ties the end of the fabric into a neat knot.

Lu Han takes his arm back, cradling it against his chest. “It wouldn’t matter if I did.”

There aren’t any crickets in this wood, like there are in the one behind Chen’s home, nothing to fill the silence. Lu Han curls into himself, trying to make himself smaller under Chen’s eyes.

Finally, Chen lies back in the grass like he had in the puddle, looking up at the starry sky. “I stand by what I said,” he says, reaching out to tap Lu Han on the knee. Lu Han shivers. The water dripping down his neck from his wet hair is making him cold, but the place where Chen touched is warm. “It’s his loss.”


	3. Part 3

They end up sleeping curled together in the underbrush, to keep Lu Han’s glow from attracting any unwanted visitors more than anything. Chen’s clothed body is like a blanket to Lu Han’s mostly bare one, keeping him from shivering. When Lu Han wakes to daylight, Chen is gone.

Or rather, he’s no longer next to Lu Han in the underbrush. He can hear Chen singing out in the clearing as he splashes around in the puddle for a morning swim.

Lu Han stretches, shaking some pine needles out of his hair, and Chen waves him over, still singing to himself. The forest around them still has a dreary sort of look, even with the sun out. The mist hangs in the dark spaces between the trees and there’s hardly any sounds in the wood around them.

“Just wanted to take a dip while I still could,” Chen says, walking out of the water and onto the grass. He uses his shirt to dry himself, and Lu Han can’t help but stare at the way the sunlight catches each droplet sliding down Chen’s spine as he leans over to rub the water off his hairy legs.

“Um,” Lu Han says, swallowing in the hopes of wetting his suddenly dry mouth. Chen glances over his shoulder at him, and Lu Han blinks. “The food Yifan gave us?”

“Oh yeah,” Chen points to where his pants are lying.

By the time Chen has his pants on again, Lu Han has already dug into the bread and cheese, setting out portions for them both on the cloth Yifan had used as wrapping.

Chen prattles on about his different favorite kinds of cheese while Lu Han listens and doesn’t watch the beads of water slip down Chen’s bare shoulders from his hairline. Over Chen’s shoulder, Lu Han thinks he sees something move just beyond the edge of the trees. His heart leaps into his throat and he drops the piece of bread he’s holding.

Chen must clock his face, because he quickly turns around, just in time to see the something come into the clearing.

At a distance, Lu Han knows from just one look that the man is a fairy. His wings aren’t like Lu Han’s, filmy and golden. They’re like that of a butterfly, bigger, with a brightly colored pattern that’s mirrored on each side.

“I heard singing?” The fairy has a dreamy sort of voice, and he flies toward them, slowly looking around the clearing.

“That was… me?” Chen says haltingly.

The fairy smiles, happy dimples caving in his cheeks. “You voice reminds me of home.” He scans the clearing again, dimples disappearing again. “I seem to be a long way from there, actually. Like the two of you.”

“Yeah, we got sort of,” Lu Han searches for the right word, “transported here.”

The fairy tilts his head. “Through a fuzzy bit of sky?”

“Something like that.”

“Would you like something to eat?” Chen asks. He shuffles to his feet to pull his shirt on, cheeks inexplicably pink.

“Wait,” the fairy says, coming close enough that he can reach out and touch Chen’s back. “This mark, the star on your shoulder: where’d you get it?”

Chen turns his head, trying in vain to look at the mark on his shoulder blade. “My birthmark? I’ve always had it.”

“It’s a star.” Unlike his dreamy look from before, now the fairy’s eyes are bright, and there’s a new quirk to his mouth. He lowers his arm. “How unique.”

Chen clears his throat, tugging his shirt on all the way. “I guess.”

The fairy, Yixing, is somehow exactly like what Lu Han imagined fairies to be, and not like that at all. He has an impressively extensive knowledge of magic and the world, but he also doesn’t hesitate to curl up on the ground next to them, nibbling at a bit of apple that is starting to go brown.

In the clearing, there are a few wildflowers, petals powder blue and yellow, and Yixing sighs when he catches sight of them.

“Oh, to be a flower again,” the fairy says, sounding wistful, “to be so grounded and carefree.”

“You were a flower?” Chen sounds half curious, half disbelieving.

Yixing nods, pointing at the biggest wildflower, a daisy with its face upturned toward the faint sunlight. “Fairies live our first life as a flower, the second on two feet, after we bloom, and the third begins a year later, when we get our wings. After we die, we become stardust, and what’s left of our magic lights the night sky.”

Chen licks his lips. “So you were born…”

“From a flower, yes. All fairies are. Other beings have to earn wings,” the fairy nods at Lu Han as an example as he turns a crumb of bread between his fingers, “but a fairy’s own magic, our life force, is enough to make us fly once we’re old enough. Without our magic, we can’t live.”

Chen’s eyes drift to Lu Han, and he knows they’re both thinking of what Lu Han had confessed the night before, about losing his wings.

Tactfully, Chen changes the subject. “You didn’t happen to see a toad while you were wandering through the forest, did you?”

Yixing blinks. “A toad?”

Together, Chen and Lu Han explain how they ended up in this clearing, the kidnapping and the adventure with the Golden Goose. After they finish, Yixing sits back, picking at the knees of his trousers as he thinks.

“These smudges, the ones that transported us, they’re links between different worlds, different stories,” Yixing says at last. “A long time ago, the Fairy King used some of his magic on the most important items in each of the stories, so that the stories themselves could be alive.”

“The Fairy King?” Chen sits up straighter, intrigued. “He’s from my world, right? My mother used to tell me stories about him and his mushroom-circled court.”

“Yes, and that court is my home.” Yixing smiles at Chen, before his face goes serious again. “But if someone were to collect all the magical items, they would have enough power to challenge the Fairy King. More than that, with the magic gone from the stories, each world would begin to fall apart. It would be a disaster.”

“And you think that’s what the toad is doing?” Lu Han asks, taking it all in. “Trying to collect all these items?”

“I can’t think of another explanation for his actions. What would an ordinary toad want with a magical goose feather?”

“I wonder what he was trying to do with me,” Chen muses, mostly to himself, and Lu Han catches an unexpected look on Yixing’s face, intent and calculating. After a few seconds, it smooths out again, smile dimpling at them both again.

“Thank you for the food and company,” Yixing says, his colorful wings lifting him up from the ground with a few gentle flaps. “I should try to find my way back so I can warn the king.”

Before either Lu Han or Chen can protest that the three of them should travel together, since they’re all trying to get to the same place, Yixing is already disappearing into the trees on the other side of the clearing. In a few more seconds, he’s out of sight.

“So that was…” Lu Han trails off, and Chen nods.

“Illuminating.” He begins packing up what’s left of their food, hands busily tying the bundle up. Lu Han can tell by the downturned corners of his mouth that Chen has something else to say.

“What is it?”

Chen sits back on his heels, combing his mostly-dry hair back from his face. “We’ve got to stop this.”

Lu Han hesitates. He’s gone on adventures with Chanyeol before, but something like this, trying to— to save the world…

“If we don’t, there will be nowhere for us to go back to.” Chen pushes himself to his feet, dusting off his travel-worn pants. “You heard Yixing. Our worlds will have fallen apart.”

Unbidden, the words of the witch come back to Lu Han. _”There’s more wings where these came from.”_ It’s only been a day, but already the wings feel lighter on his back, like they’re slowly fading away.

Chen offers Lu Han a hand up, and Lu Han takes it, making his decision. “Okay.”

✴

Once they head back into the trees, Lu Han’s uneasiness about the forest returns. The fog clings to the trees even when the sun is high, and the sound of he and Chen treading through the underbrush with their tiny feet is loud in the quiet.

After a few hours of walking, Chen humming to himself occasionally as they tread over a bed of pine needles, the trees appear to thin out in front of them. There’s the crunch of heavier footsteps, and through the trees, Lu Han catches a glimpse of red.

It’s a girl, the hood of her bright red cloak pulled over her head as she makes her way down the forest path. There’s a wicker basket in one of her hands, and when she glances over her shoulder, Lu Han catches sight of her pretty face.

By the time he and Chen make it to the edge of the path, she’s already disappeared into the mist hanging further down the trail on their right, and along the edge of the trees, to their left, he can see there’s something following her.

It turns out to be a wolf, or maybe a boy, darting from tree to tree. He’s only a dark shape in the dimmed light of the forest, but as he comes closer, there are glimpses of a tail and dark ears on his head.

He almost plows right into them as he tries to slip to behind the tree on the other side of where they’re standing. Lu Han releases a burst of sparks as he tries to keep his balance, clutching at Chen’s arm and flapping his wings.

“What the— “ The wolfboy stops abruptly in front of them, the claws on the end of his human fingertips at the ready as he searches for the source of the disturbance. Then he glances down at his feet, where Lu Han and Chen are.

“Huh,” he says, retracting his claws and crouching down to get a better look at them. “You’re really small.”

Chen glares, probably still annoyed at almost being stepped on. “Well, you’re a man-wolf hybrid, which is just as weird.”

The wolfboy considers this, his ears twitching. “Fair enough.”

He’s got yellow eyes, and grayish cast to his skin that makes his irises look even brighter.

“Are you looking for that girl?” Lu Han asks. “The one with the red hood.”

“You saw Taeyeon?” He smiles, sharp teeth digging into his lower lip. “Then I must be close.”

“You know her?”

“Know her? Yeah, I know her delicious-looking skin, her succulent mouth.” His eyes go unfocused. “Her mouthwatering smell.”

“Mouthwatering?” Lu Han repeats.

Chen eyes Baekhyun suspiciously. “You wouldn’t happen to be the kind of wolf that eats people, would you?”

The wolfboy sits back on his haunches, rolling his eyes. “Well these teeth aren’t just to give me a beautiful smile, if you know what I mean.” He runs his tongue over the jagged edges of his smile suggestively.

“But she’s beautiful, you couldn’t possibly eat her!”

The wolfboy sighs, pressing a clawed hand to his chest. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

Confused, Lu Han tries to clarify, “Wait, so you like her?”

“Look, pipsqueak,” the wolfboy says, dropping his hand. “I’m a realist. I think Little Red is gorgeous, I really do, but if I tried to woo her, I’d probably eat her. It’s hard to give someone the kiss of true love when you’re distracted by wanting to take a bite out of them.”

Chen crosses his arms, scoffing. “I don’t think you’re really like that. A kiss is a way to show someone how you feel about them. If you really like her, I bet if you were given the chance, you’d do it right.”

The wolfboy clicks one of his claws against the front of his teeth thoughtfully. “Maybe.”

“Well, come on!” Chen says. “Lets go find her! And no creeping through the shadows this time. That’ll only freak her out.”

Chen ends up sitting comfortably in the palm of the wolfboy’s hand as they make their way down the trail, already talking to him as if they’re old friends.

The wolfboy seems intrigued by the way Lu Han glows, and the trail of sparks he leaves as he flies. “I’m Baekhyun,” he says, after Chen introduces them both.

“Barkhyun? Like the sound dogs make?”

“No,” the wolfboy growls at Chen, yellow eyes flashing, “ _Baek_ hyun.”

Suddenly visible through the fog they’d been walking through is Taeyeon, standing in the middle of the trail with her hands on her hips.

“There she is!” Chen chirrups happily, the sound making her whirl around.

“That stupid toad stole my cloak!” She stamps a booted foot, hair billowing around her shoulders tempestuously. Taeyeon looks much older without her red hood on, pretty mouth pulled into an angry frown. “I would have crushed him with my bare hands if I could’ve caught him, but the little bastard’s too fast.”

She glances over at Baekhyun, who’s got his tongue hanging out of his mouth as he stares at her. “What do you want?” she snaps.

“Nothing,” Baekhyun says quickly, rolling his tongue back up behind his pointy teeth. “I mean, I’m Baekhyun.”

Taeyeon raises her eyebrows. “You’re that wolf creep that’s always stalking me on my way to Grandma’s.”

Baekhyun looks simultaneously elated that Taeyeon recognizes him and upset that she knows him as “that wolf creep”, and Lu Han quashes the urge to laugh.

“Which direction did he go?” he asks Taeyeon instead.

“The toad? Up into those bushes up there.” She frowns again. “Why— Ugh, get away, you creep!” Eyes closed, Baekhyun has been inching steadily closer to Taeyeon, sniffing the air, and she hits Baekhyun over the head with her basket.

His ears droop apologetically as he takes a step back. “You just smell so good— “

Taeyeon’s eyes narrow dangerously and Chen waves his arms from where he’s still sitting in Baekhyun’s hand. “He means the cookies you’re carrying smell so good— “

“Yes. That’s it. Your cookies. I wanted to try one?”

Taeyeon eyes Baekhyun reluctantly. “If it’ll make you go away. But _only_ one.”

Chen claps his hands together happily and then taps Baekhyun’s wrist to signal that he wants to be put down. “Right,” he says as Lu Han lands next to him, “so Baekhyun, you keep Taeyeon company while we go after the toad, okay?”

Taeyeon and Baekhyun are too busy with their cookie exchange to listen, and Chen and Lu Han take the chance to head toward the clump of bushes Taeyeon had pointed to.

“I feel kind of bad for leaving her with someone who wants to eat her,” Lu Han says, glancing over his shoulder.

“Has anyone told you you’re an excellent baker?” he hears Baekhyun say hopefully as he wipes the crumbs from around his mouth, and Taeyeon hits him over the head with her wicker basket again.

Chen smirks and tugs on Lu Han’s arm, their fingers laced comfortably together as they approach the smudge. “I think she’s got it handled.”

✴

“You know,” Chen says, as they make their way down a cavernous castle corridor, “this is a little harder than I thought it was going to be.”

Lu Han nods, dragging his feet over the thickly piled carpet that’s laid over the stone. He still feels a little shaken from their encounter with the Beast in the tower at the top of the castle, who had been close to eating them both in one bite when it turned out that one of the petals from his magical rose was gone. Luckily, the only other human in the castle, a beautiful woman, had talked him down so that they could explain who the real thief was. The Beast, who the woman called Sehun, had let them go on the condition that they never came back to the castle, and Lu Han had practically dragged Chen out of the room in his haste to get away.

The castle was probably once luxurious, but now it’s dark and gothic, with suits of armor that watch them as they pass.

“I kind of imagined the toad would be easier to catch? But it’s hard when we don’t have any idea where he’s going to be next.”

Lu Han agrees. They’ve already chased the toad through countless stories, missing catching him every time. Before this castle, they’d been in a tower, where a girl named Krystal, with ridiculously long hair, had raged at them about a toad that had stolen a lock of her hair while her paramour, Prince Kai, stroked the remaining locks of it and told them seriously, “Petting her hair reminds me of my dogs.”

Chen cranes his neck, squinting up at the paintings on the walls of the corridor. “Now where did we see that smudge before?”

“It was the painting of the prince,” Lu Han says, pointing to one of the biggest canvases a little further down the wall. It’s large enough that the bottom of the frame is fairly close to the floor, and Lu Han wordlessly boosts Chen up onto the edge of it before pulling himself up the rest of the way.

Lu Han had lost his wings several stories ago, but his back still feels empty, phantom flutters wracking his shoulders sometimes. They’d been in another castle then, trying to deal with a pea that had been stolen right from under a towering stack of mattresses.

“I need that pea!” the suitor, Zitao, had shouted while the princess had looked on, amused. “I need to prove that I have the sensitive bottom of royalty!”

In a stroke of genius, Chen had replaced the pea, which the toad had obviously stolen, with the magic bean they’d been given by Yifan.

“What I want to know,” Chen had told Lu Han as they’d spent another night looking up at the night sky, “is how the toad is carrying all the things he’s stealing. He needs all his toady legs to hop, so what gives?” The constellations in each world were different, and he and Chen liked to lie together, reaching up to trace different pictures in the stars.

Tactfully, he never brought up when Lu Han’s wings had finally disappeared, on his back one minute and gone the next, or how Lu Han’s eyes had welled up with tears he blinked away when he realized what had happened.

“I wonder if this is what Sehun looked like before he went all,” Chen uses his index fingers in imitation of the Beast’s monstrous fangs and snarls as they tip their heads back to get a better look at the face of the painting’s subject. The prince in it is no more than a teenager, with golden hair and a pointed chin.

“Probably,” Lu Han says. “This is his castle.”

“It’s sweet that Boa loves him despite the,” Chen mimes the fangs again. “I wonder how they kiss.”

Lu Han inches along the edge of the frame toward the smudged bit of the prince’s painted foot. “I thought the kiss of true love was supposed to break his curse?”

“Hmm, I guess they haven’t yet, then.”

They’ve seen several true love’s kisses on their journey, but two of them standing out starkly in Lu Han’s mind.

The first was in the forest they had visited after they’d left Baekhyun and Taeyeon. They’d walked in on some kind of wake, the lifeless body of a princess laid out on a slab of rock while a group of dwarves gathered around to mourn, along with one prince. The prince had looked overcome with grief as he knelt beside the princess, clutching her hand tightly in his.

“Sooyoung, you can’t be dead,” he’d said desperately, ugly tears streaming down his cheeks. “I came to tell you that I love you. You just _can’t_ be dead.”

He’d leaned over and pressed his lips to hers for a second before collapsing back onto his knees in despair. It had been hard to watch. Lu Han averted his eyes until he’d heard someone take in a deep breath and dissolve into a coughing fit.

When he looked again, the princess was sitting up, alive and holding a bite of apple in her hand. “Suho?” she had said, looking up at the prince, voice hoarse.

“Did the kiss of true love just bring that girl back to life?” Chen had hissed skeptically, and Lu Han had dragged Chen away from the scene.

The other was next to a palace lily pond, where a frog was hopping around the bank forlornly. Unlike the toad, he didn’t have it out for Lu Han and Chen, and was only upset because his crown had been stolen by the toad.

“I’m a frog _prince_ ,” the frog, Minseok, had said, “but without my crown, no princess will ever know, and I’ll never get the kiss of true love that will turn me back into a human.”

While Lu Han personally had thought that the prince made a very cute frog, Minseok looked at his green reflection sadly.

“I’ll kiss you.” A woman had walked out from the doorway of the castle to the pond, her long dress trailing behind her on the grass. “Only an idiot would need a crown to see that you’re a prince.”

And when she had picked up the frog and kissed him— in a blinding flash, he had been replaced by a man with the same naturally smiling eyes. The woman had smiled down at him indulgently. “See,” she said, “I told you.”

The kiss of true love can bring people back from the dead and break even the most powerful magical curses. Lu Han wonders if the kiss Chanyeol and Kyungsoo shared the night he left Never Land was one. He wonders what a kiss feels like when it’s true love.

“Ready?” Chen asks, holding out a hand for Lu Han to take when they end up in front of the smudge in the painting. Lu Han takes it with a smile and they press forward into the crushing pressure, made flat and then whole again, and blinking away dry eyes on the other side of the smudge.

“Whoa.” Both their mouths drop open when they see where they’ve ended up.

Compared to the dreary, gothic castle they’d just left, the room in front of them is startling. It’s obviously the entryway of a large house, with a grand stairway of marble steps curving around one wall and a glittering chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

The room is filled with the sound of someone humming. Near the base of the stairs, there is a person on their knees, scrubbing at the floor. The voice humming is definitely a girl’s, but the person cleaning is dressed in men’s clothes.

“Excuse me,” Chen says, trying to be heard over the humming. If there’s one thing he and Lu Han have learned on their travels, it’s that people react better when you announce yourself first.

The person turns toward Chen, the humming stopping abruptly. “Oh!” It’s a girl, with closely cropped hair and surprised eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Um, magic kind of… transported us here into your entryway.” It’s not a great explanation, but the longer version tends to be too confusing for people.

“Magic, huh?” The girl sits back, her cleaning brush still in hand, and says, “Normally, I wouldn’t believe you, but last night, my fairy godmother used her magic to send me to the ball at the palace, and I wore this fancy dress and met the prince and danced with him, and he was just so.” She sighs dreamily, her rambling trailing off. ”So _great_.” Seeming to remember herself, she points her brush at Lu Han and Chen threateningly. “If you tell anyone about that I’ll feed you to my stepmother’s awful cat.”

“Don’t worry,” Chen says. “We don’t have anyone to tell but each other, anyway.”

Lu Han nods earnestly and the girl seems satisfied.

“I know it sounds silly,” she says thoughtfully, “but it’s not the kiss, true love’s kiss that’s important, it’s the intent behind it.” She dips her brush back into the bucket and begins to scrub at the floor again. “It’s a way to say _I like you just the way you are_ or _this is what you mean to me_. I haven’t had anyone say those kinds of things to me since my father died and when the prince kissed me like that, it was… nice.”

Dropping her brush into the bucket with a splash, she leans forward, like she’s about to tell them a secret.

“The dress and stuff disappeared at the stroke of midnight last night, but,” the girl looks around quickly before pulling a bundle of cloth out of her pants pocket, “I still have this.” With careful fingers, she unwraps the fabric to reveal a piece of clear glass. “I left one at the palace and something tripped me earlier so this one broke. It used to be a shoe, a really beautiful one, but this is all that’s left.”

Lu Han studies the broken shard. There’s something about it, a glimmer of magic as the light of the chandelier hits it, that catches Lu Han’s attention. The toad has already been here.

“Cinderella!” a shrill voice shrieks from up the staircase, and the girl hurriedly wraps the glass up again.

“You’d better hide,” she whispers, pointing toward the chest of drawers along the far wall, where there is just enough space for them to squeeze under. “My stepmother would have a fit if she saw you down here.”

Lu Han and Chen skitter off across the marble floor as the shrill voice calls again, this time from the landing at the top of the stairs. “Cinderella! How many times to I have to scream your name?”

Still kneeling next to her bucket, Cinderella lowers her head but doesn’t respond.

“Are you finished with your chores yet?”

She looks around at how much of the floor she still has left to clean. “Nearly.”

“Once you’re done, I want you to clean the drawing room floor as well. There’s a dirty patch on the far side of the china cabinet that— “

A sharp knock on the front door echoes through the room.

“Well,” says the unpleasantly shrill voice, “aren’t you going to get that?”

Pushing herself up, Cinderella walks over to open the door. She looks even more like a boy standing up, the bagginess of her shirt and pants hiding her body and her hair messy from cleaning, but Lu Han thinks she’s still pretty.

Outside the front door of the house, there’s a very posh-looking footman waiting, who announces, “The Grand Duke and his Royal Highness, the prince, would like to meet with the mistress of the house, miss.”

Cinderella nods, face white as a sheet when she turns to look back at the top of the stairs.

“The prince is _here?_ ” The voice sounds less shrill and more sharp, more intimidating now. “Show him into the drawing room at once and prepare some tea.”

The prince is tall, with the golden fringe of his epaulettes swinging from his shoulders and crimson pants. The heels of his shoes click loudly on the marble floors as Cinderella leads him, the duke, and what looks like a palace servant, into the drawing room.

Stealthily, Lu Han and Chen skitter across the entrance hall to peer through the door that’s been left ajar behind them.

The drawing room is filled with sunlight pouring in through the bay windows along the far wall, with elegant blue wallpaper and cream furniture arranged around the room. There’s a set of chairs and table made of glossy dark wood, and a huge fireplace with a mantlepiece that is almost the same height as the prince.

Across the room at the table, Cinderella keeps glancing hopefully at the prince, like she’s waiting for him to recognize her as she lays out the tea, but he is too busy restlessly pacing in front of the fireplace.

“This seems a little excessive, your Highness,” the duke says from his seat next to the window, as he stirs several cubes of sugar into his cup of tea. “You only met this girl once.”

Chen taps Lu Han on the shoulder, pointing to another chest of drawers just in the side the room that they could hide under. Lu Han nods, sprinting inside and under it quickly, Chen at his heels.

“I don’t care if I have to put this shoe on every woman in the kingdom,” The prince is saying once they’re situated to look again. “I’ve got to find her. She was different. Her eyes, and when we kissed…” The prince presses his fingers to his lips, and Cinderella’s face goes red as she clutches a towel to her chest.

She’s in the middle of opening her mouth to say something when the door Lu Han and Chen just came through bursts open. Lu Han can only see shoes at first, three pairs of extravagant heels under swishing skirts, but the shrill-voiced woman, who can only be Cinderella’s stepmother, is there, greeting the prince and introducing the other two as her daughters.

Compared to Cinderella, her stepsister’s aren’t necessarily ugly, tiny noses and lipstick-pink mouths, but there’s a pinched, snobbish look to their faces that makes them wholly unattractive.

The prince obviously thinks so too. He manages to put on a good face as the duke explains that they are here to find the woman who fits the glass slipper— the palace servant that had retreated to the corner steps forward to display a pure glass shoe sitting on a cushion — but when each of the sisters fawns over him in turn, the prince’s mouth tightens into a thin line or irritation.

The slipper, which must be the match of the one Cinderella had broken earlier that day, doesn’t fit either of the stepsisters. No amount of smooth talking from their mother can change that, but that doesn’t stop her from trying.

As she talks, Lu Han watches Cinderella. She’s standing along the wall, the same as the palace servant, but she looks like she’s screwing up the courage for something. Her hand is in her pocket, clutching the bundle of cloth there.

“Thank you for your help, but we really must be going.” The prince starts edging for the door, ignoring the girl’s whiny protests, and Cinderella finally steps forward.

“Don’t go!”

“And who would this be?” The duke holds up his monocle to get a better look at Cinderella as the prince turns back around.

“It’s no one,” the stepmother says hastily, trying to block Cinderella from view with her arms outstretched.

“I’m her stepdaughter,” Cinderella says, ducking her head under one of her stepmother’s arms, “and I was the one who danced with you at the ball last night, your Highness!” The prince still looks skeptical, and Cinderella pulls out the piece of glass, unwrapping it. “Here’s a piece of the other slipper. It broke, but I still have it.” She looks at him beseechingly, and says, “Henry, please.”

“That piece of glass could be from anything, you silly girl,” her stepmother says, trying to rush her out the door.

Lu Han catches the crestfallen look on her face, the prince caught in a moment of indecision, and suddenly finds himself stepping out from their hiding place.

“Wait!” he shouts, loud enough to be heard.

It takes everyone a few moments to figure out where Lu Han’s voice is coming from, various noises of surprise filling the room.

“What is that little thing, a _mouse?_ ” the stepmother exclaims hysterically and the grand duke glares at her through his monocle.

“Madam,” he says primly, “I think you had better calm down.”

“It’s okay, they’re my friends,” Cinderella says. She moves out from behind her stepmother, smoothing the wrinkles from her pants.

The prince crouches down curiously, all the irritated tightness gone from his mouth. Like this, he’s rather handsome. “What is it, little sprite?”

Lu Han swallows the lump of nervousness in his throat, and says, “She doesn’t have the other shoe, but she’s still the same person with the same feelings. If you won’t let her try the slipper on, then just kiss her, and you’ll know.”

The prince looks up at Cinderella and Lu Han chances a glance over at Chen. Chen is victoriously pumping his fist in the air, grinning widely. Lu Han’s heart swells at the shine in Chen’s eyes, and he finds himself grinning back.

“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” the prince says, straightening back up to his full height. Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters loudly yowl their objections, but not before Prince Henry sweeps Cinderella into his arms and kisses her.

✴

“Hey,” Chen says when they fall out of the smudge and onto the ground. “I know where we are.”

There’s tall grass all around them swaying in the wind, and the air smells of salt and fish. Behind them is Chen’s house. The color of the shudders is still cheery, but the flowers in the window box have long since wilted. Just like all the other worlds they’ve visited this one has it’s own feeling, it’s own color palette, and Lu Han sighs at the familiarity

“Home, sweet home,” he says, readjusting his cloth after their fall from the sky.

“At least for me.” Chen stands, clapping Lu Han on the shoulder proudly. “Look at you, talking to groups of large strangers.”

Lu Han ducks his head. Honestly, he’d surprised himself too. “I just didn’t want that girl to be unhappy.”

“You were great!” Chen says, and then turns around in a full circle, taking the meadow in. He furrows his eyebrows. “Does this place look like it’s falling apart to you?”

It’s late afternoon, the sunlight shining sideways through the trees of the forest, but Chen is right. Something is off. There are bits of sky that are white instead of blue and dark spots in the grass.

“I wonder if this is what Yixing meant when he— “ A dark shape bursts through the grass around them, knocking both of them over. Lu Han’s shoulder hits the ground painfully, making him hiss as he tries to get up.

It’s almost like seeing back into the past when Lu Han looks over at Chen and sees him pinned to the ground by the great body of the toad. He shouts and struggles in the dirt as the toad croaks down at him gleefully.

“You’re not getting away this time,” it says, “not when you’re all that stands between me and unimaginable power.”

Lu Han picks up the biggest pebble that will fit in his hand and chucks it at the toad. “Leave him alone!”

“Ah, the pixie,” the toad sneers, wheeling around to look at Lu Han.

From this angle, Lu Han can see the toad has a horrible imitation of a crown on his head. The metal crown itself is probably the one the frog prince Minseok had been missing, only now it has bits of each of the magical items it’s stolen mashed and visible around it’s edges. The gold plume of a feather, the tattered edge of a red piece of fabric, a shard of glass. The slight glimmer of magic Lu Han had seen around the piece of Cinderella’s glass slipper is increased around the crown tenfold, forbiddingly glittering from atop the toads head.

The toad’s bulbous eyes look Lu Han over, throat expanding and contracting as it breathes. “You’re missing your wings, pixie. Even if you had them, it wouldn’t matter. With the crown, you’re no match for me. Not even with your magic dust.”

Behind the toad, Chen is getting back to his feet, looking rumpled, but all right.

“We’ll just see about that,” Lu Han says, preparing to bomb the toad in its face with more sparks, like he had in the swamp. As Lu Han approaches, the toad lifts itself up on its back legs, pointing the top of its head at Lu Han. There’s a raised area on either side of the crown, almost like a wart, that’s oozing something—

Lu Han is close enough to shoot his sparks when the toad leaps forward, running into Lu Han and smearing some of the oozing substance on his hands at the contact.

The searing pain is immediate. Lu Han screams, the burning on his palms making him fall back onto the grass in agony. He curls into himself, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes as he tries to wipe the ooze off his skin and onto the grass.

As he moans in pain, Lu Han can dimly hear Chen and the toad arguing.

“Stop trying to undress me! I’ve said a hundred times that no matter what, I’m not going to marry you!”

“Marry you!” the toad says, halfway between a croak and a burp. “You may be the son of the Fairy King, but what I want isn’t you, it’s your magic.”

“What did you say?” Chen’s voice is muffled, like he’s speaking half into the ground.

“This mark, you don’t know what it is?”

“The star? It’s a birthmark. I’ve always had it.”

If toads could sigh, Lu Han is sure this one would. “All fairies carry a unique mark like this, a place where their life force magic is, and this one, marking you as the long lost son of the Fairy King, is the last magical item I need.”

Chen begins to shout again, the sound more desperate than before. The pain in Lu Han’s hands has lessened enough for him to be able to open his eyes. He sees Chen pressed onto his stomach, the toad with webbed fingers over the mark on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, little prince,” the toad says, its croaky voice almost cooing. “Once I have your magic, I’ll let you go.”

Lu Han shakes his head, trying to clear it from the buzz of hurt coursing through his body. He looks down at his hands. They’re raw and aching where the toad’s ooze touched, but when he flexes his fingers, a few sparks appear.

Chen’s scream splits the air, agony personified, when the toads four spidery fingers are pulling something from his back. As it does, a glittering gold mist comes out of Chen’s birthmark like a wispy string and disappears into the toad’s body.

Chen’s voice cracks as he screams and screams. Then he falls silent, and Lu Han is on his feet before he has time to think. The last of the gold mist dissolves into nothing.

Finished, he toad crawls back onto the grass. The crown pulses on its head, space sucking in along it’s edges, as if it’s absorbing all the energy around it. The ground trembles ominously.

Chen is still lying on the ground, unmoving, and the fear and anger swirling in Lu Han’s gut overpowers the pain from the toad’s poison. He cries out, hands extended as he runs toward the toad, sparks already flooding from his palms.

The toad, busy basking in its success, is caught unawares. It stumbles over its own feet, listing sideways in its pixie dust daze, and the crown slides off its head, landing heavily on the grass.

Lu Han crumples at Chen’s side, panting and frantic. The birthmark star birthmark on Chen’s shoulder flickers and goes out.

With shaking, injured hands, Lu Han turns Chen over so he can see his face. There are tear tracks shining from the corners of his eyes, his lips parted as if to take in a breath, but Chen isn’t breathing.

Lu Han can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, can feel it in his throat. Yixing said that without their magic, fairies died, and if Chen is really the son of the Fairy King then that means right now, Chen is dead in his arms. “If it’s magic you need to live, then take my voice,” Lu Han whispers down at Chen. If he doesn’t look too closely, it’s almost as if Chen is just sleeping. “It’s my magic to give away.” He’d rather never speak again if it means Chen would be able to live.

The toad is still stumbling around in the grass, letting out little bewildered croaks, but Lu Han doesn’t pay it any attention.

His lips are trembling as he cradles Chen’s face in his hands. Lu Han uses his thumbs to wipe the tears from Chen’s cheeks and combs the hair out of his face. “Let’s hope this kiss thing works,” he murmurs, and presses their mouths together.

It’s not the first kiss that Lu Han wanted, Chen’s lips soft but unresponsive under his, and the feeling of something being ripped from his throat, glass scraping the inside of his mouth until he’s sure it must be bloody. A bright, golden light behind his eyelids.

Lu Han’s heart sinks when he pulls back to look at Chen and nothing happens.

Then—

There’s a tingling near his shoulder blades, like something bubbling under his skin, hot and itching. Something explodes from his back, along with a shower of sparks, and Lu Han gasps for breath. In shock, he looks over his shoulder and catches sight of _wings_.

Next to where he’s kneeling, Chen groans, shifting in the grass. Lu Han scrambles to help him sit up.

“What happened? Did I die?” Chen rasps, his voice probably raw from screaming. He rubs at his face with his hands. “Why do you have wings?”

Lu Han opens his mouth to answer, the words coiling up in his throat, but instead of the voice he’s been using, only bells come out. Sparks plume from Lu Han’s burned palms as he holds them out to Chen wordlessly, trying to explain.

“What,” Chen says, blinking rapidly.

A ways away, the toad lets out a particularly loud croak, starting to come back to his senses, and Chen turns toward the sound. “Later,” he says, standing unsteadily. “You can explain later.”

Lu Han lifts himself up, feeling the strength of his new wings for the first time. They’re larger than his old pair, flapping with unexpected power.

Chen reaches down to pick of the crown that had fallen from the toad’s head turning it over in his hands to look at all the different items that have been added on.

“I think I know what to use this for,” Chen says, as the toad circles around. It must catch sight of the glinting gold of the crown, because it lets out a deafening croak and waddles forward, yellow eyes fixed on Chen.

From his place in the air, Lu Han can tell what Chen is going to do a moment before he does it, raising the crown high over his head, and bringing it down as hard as he can onto the toad’s forehead.

The bright flash that occurs is a lot like the one when Minseok, the frog prince, and turned into a human after being kissed. It’s bright enough to make Lu Han shield his eyes, and when he looks again, in the toad’s place is a round, toad-like man instead.

“Huh?” the man croaks, eyes practically rolling in his head as he tries to look at his new body. He’s not much bigger than Lu Han or Chen, except maybe sideways, and he’s got an unpleasantly bumpy complexion. He zeroes in on Chen again. “You!”

He lunges, new human hands outstretched. Chen shouts swinging the crown at him again and Lu Han dive-bombs, knocking him back to the ground with a furious chime.

“Stop!” There’s a boom, almost like thunder, and through the grasses comes a man with the largest pair of wings Lu Han has ever seen. They’re a bright, iridescent blue that shimmers with the last of the daylight, and on his head is a crown of blue flowers. The Fairy King.

“I see Yixing was right,” he says. “The two of you had this handled.” The king’s voice is like the deep, powerful noise of ocean waves lapping at a beach of sand, or the echoing rumble of a waterfall, and Lu Han wants to sink into it. The king holds out a hand. “I’ll take that crown.”

Chen hands the crown to him, mouth hanging open slightly.

The king’s mouth is like Chen’s so when he looks at Chen, expression softening as he smiles, the corners of his lips curl up. “My son, I’ve found you at last.”

Chen’s mouth opens and closes as he tries to think of something to say, but nothing comes out. The king reaches out with his empty hand, cupping Chen’s cheek with shining eyes. “Your mother will be so happy to see you.”

“Hate to interrupt the family reunion,” the toad cuts in, his nasal, human voice just as grating as his toad one had been, “but that crown is mine.”

The king turns sharp eyes on him, dropping his hand from Chen’s face. “This crown is something you _stole_ , and you would be wise to stay silent until your punishment is decided.”

The toad’s face crumples as he whines, “I just wanted enough power to make people like me!”

“You can’t make people like you,” Chen says, coming out of his shocked reverie. “You can only be who you are and the rest is up to them. People didn’t dislike you because you were a toad, they disliked you because you were mean and stole things from them.”

The toad huffs, and if he were still in his toad body, Lu Han thinks his throat would be swelling angrily. “In that case, I’d rather be a toad again. This walking on two legs thing makes no sense.”

With nimble fingers, the king begins taking apart the the crown, piece by piece. He sets them on the grass, the shred of Taeyeon’s red cloak, the Pea. “You, toad, must fix the mess you’ve made by returning each piece to its rightful story.” Rapunzel’s lock of hair, the Beast’s single rose petal, the core of an apple. “Once this is finished, you’ll become a toad again.” A thimble, the Golden Goose’s feather, and at last, the crown itself. “And maybe, you might even make some friends along the way.”

The toad beings to whine again, and the king draws himself up. His eyes flash and his blue wings flutter at his back. “If it weren’t for his companion, you would have succeeded in murdering my son. You should count yourself lucky that I am letting you go at all. Do not make me regret my clemency.”

The toad shrinks into himself, scooting back into the grasses and grumbling.

“Yixing told me you’re called Chen,” the king says to Chen, letting himself stand on the ground again.

Chen nods so vigorously that his hair bobs. He points at the house. “This is where I live, with my mother. Or. Well, I thought she was my mother.” Chen blushes and the king laughs.

Lu Han watches the scene silently.

He feels… happy. Chen’s heart is beating and the world is no longer in danger of falling apart. He even has his wings back.

But when he swallows, his sore throat is a reminder that if he were to try to speak, only bells would come out. His voice is gone.

The ugly twisting in his chest is back again, the lump of unsaid words clogging the back of his mouth. He wants to go _home_.

“Lu Han?” Chen says curiously. “Where are you going?”

Lu Han chokes, a single, solitary spark bursting to life between them and going out. If he could have spoken, he would have said, _I can’t_ , but Lu Han has lost his voice. Instead, he flies away.

✴

Never Land is different when Lu Han gets back.

Kyungsoo is gone, and Chanyeol, who forgets people the he doesn’t see for three days, still remembers him and talks about him all the time.

“He said he thought I could grow up, that he really believed I could, and I can’t get it outta my head!” Chanyeol, who had been flying in lazy corkscrews above where Lu Han is lying in the sand, lets himself waft to the ground. “I can’t get anything outta my head these days.” He puffs air against his pouting lower lip to blow the hair out of his eyes as he glances over at Lu Han. “Ya’know what I mean, Tink?”

Lu Han answers Chanyeol with a pop of sparks and a jingle, because he knows exactly what he means.

It was easier to become accustomed to living without his wings than it’s been to get used to being without his voice again. Luckily, Chanyeol doesn’t expect anything different from him, so there’s nothing for Lu Han to explain.

Chanyeol hadn’t forgotten him either, which makes Lu Han happy in so many ways, only not in the one he’d expected. Chanyeol is his best friend, and one of his favorite people, but nothing more than that. The heaviness that used to press on Lu Han’s chest whenever Chanyeol brought up Kyungsoo is gone.

Chanyeol starts making snow angels in the sand of the beach, moving his arms and legs back and forth as he says, thoughtfully, “D’you think if Kyungsoo says I could grow up… maybe I could? I dunno.”

For an island that always stays the same, a lot has changed. Including Lu Han.

On the outside, Lu Han came back the same pixie he’d left as, with a pair of wings and the ring of bells instead of a voice, but inside, he’s so different.

“Wowee! Tink, did’ya see that?” Chanyeol sits up, pointing inland. “A butterfly just popped out of the middle of the sky!”

_A butterfly?_ Lu Han pulls himself up into the air using his new wings. This pair is gold, like his first ones, but they’re bigger and less flimsy-looking. He likes them even though every time he remembers how he earned them, his heart aches.

Lu Han can see what Chanyeol is talking about, a dark shape flying near the center of the island, just below the single low-hanging cloud where the smudge used to be—

Lu Han’s eyes widen.

He ends up leaving Chanyeol behind on the beach in a cloud of sparks in his hurry to get to where the shape is, hardly daring to hope it could be what he thinks it is.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down!” Lu Han hears, once he’s within earshot, Chen’s voice filled with laughter. He catches Lu Han in his arms, both of them drifting back a little from the impact.

Chen smells like his home world, like salt and the grass in the meadow behind his house, and Lu Han buries his head in the curve of Chen’s neck to breathe it in.

“Missed me, huh?” Chen says, patting Lu Han on the back. “You flew off so fast, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

Lu Han draws back, a little embarrassed. Then he gets a good look at Chen’s wings. They’re big, like his father’s, with orange and white shapes on a black background, and Lu Han reaches out with a finger to touch them.

Chen smiles widely. “Like them? I got them when I came of age a few days ago.” He does a few swoops to show off, grinning. “This whole flying thing is pretty great. You definitely undersold it before.”

Lu Han laughs, a cheerful chime of bells.

“Wow,” Chen says, pausing in his swoops. His eyes are a little shiny. “I didn’t realize I missed that sound until just now.”

Down in the Mermaid’s Lagoon, Chanyeol is amusing himself by teasing the mermaids with his hat, holding it just out of their reach as they swim in the water below.

“Is that him? Chanyeol?”

There’s a catch in Chen’s voice that makes Lu Han reach for Chen’s hand. He tries to tell Chen with his eyes that he was wrong before, Chanyeol is just a friend.

Chen nods, pulling his hand away, but only to dig into his pocket for something.

He’s wearing clothing somewhere between what his mother had dressed him in, dark trousers that are rolled up to the ankle, and what the Fairy King had been wearing, a plain white shirt with an open collar and billowing sleeves.

He looks more happier like this, freer.

In his hand, when he holds it out, is a glass bottle.

“This’ll give you your voice back,” Chen says. “I traded that magic bean Yifan gave us for it. Not from the same witch you got yours from, though. She’s the one that stole my flower seed from my parents, so that would have been weird. My mom says hi, by the way. My human mom, I mean. The whole thing is… kind of confusing.” He scratches his head with his empty hand and licks his lips. “Anyway, you don’t have to take it, if you don’t want to. I like you with or without your voice. But I wanted you to be able to make that choice on your own.”

Lu Han looks at the vial in Chen’s hand, the blue tonic easily visible through the glass, and then up at Chen’s face. He looks kind of unsure about Lu Han’s non-reaction.

“Good idea or bad?” he asks, smile fading as he searches Lu Han’s face for the answer.

The words are piling up inside him, but rather than trying to say them, Lu Han throws his arms around Chen’s neck and kisses him instead.

Their lips cling together as Lu Han’s eyes slide shut, and sparks zing up and down his spine, as well as out of his hands.

“I’ll take that as good,” Chen says breathlessly. His mouth looks red and well-kissed, and there’s a halo of Lu Han’s sparks about his head. “Very good.”

Lu Han nods emphatically, bells jingling, and Chen cups the back of Lu Han’s head to kiss him again.


End file.
